What is LVM to a Windows guy

anon091 · 08-24-2009, 12:05 PM

I'm trying to load a CentOS server, figured it would be good practice. But when I go to load it, the default is to wipe whats there and use the default layout. that only has / and /boot, then there's a bunch of LVM stuff, which I'm not sure what that is. I tried reading about it, but that didn't clear it up. can anyone explain in simple terms what it is, and if i would really want to use it for a file server?

reveal · 08-24-2009, 12:08 PM

I use vmware for my centos distribution im tinkering with...
LVM is a logical volume manager for the Linux Operating System: it manages disk drives and similar mass-storage devices, in particular large ones.

www.howtoforge.com/linux_lvm <- good read for ya

anon091 · 08-24-2009, 12:34 PM

Thanks, I'll read over the article. From what I read before, it almost made it sound like LVM was a poor man's RAID or something. That's why I'm kinda leery of the "default" layout, not that i have any reason to be other than ignorance haha.

paulsm4 · 08-24-2009, 12:46 PM

Hi -

"Logical Volume Management" is a common feature in Enterprise-class OS's. Which is probably why you don't necessarily hear that much about it in Windows ;-)

Here are two other articles you might be interested in:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Veritas_Volume_Manager
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/libr...32(VS.85).aspx

anon091 · 08-24-2009, 12:53 PM

hahaha. I'll take a look at those other links, thanks. I'm just not sure what the point is, if i really need it (i know i won't need to expand my volumes), or even how to tell if I'm already using it on servers someone else loaded and i dont even know it :-)

catkin · 08-24-2009, 01:59 PM

The most compelling reason to use it on a workstation is LVM's snapshot facility. See this similar LQ thread

anon091 · 08-24-2009, 02:13 PM

thanks.