Logical Volume Management (LVM)
Move past fixed partitions with LVM: pool physical disks, carve flexible logical volumes, and resize storage on the fly so your server can grow without downtime or repartitioning.
The Limits of Fixed Partitions
Traditional partitions have a hard problem: their size is fixed at creation. If a partition fills up, resizing it is risky and often requires downtime.
LVM (Logical Volume Management) solves this by adding a flexible layer between your disks and your file systems, letting you resize and combine storage easily.
The Three LVM Layers
LVM has three concepts that stack on top of each other:
- Physical Volume (PV) — a disk or partition handed to LVM
- Volume Group (VG) — a pool combining one or more PVs
- Logical Volume (LV) — a flexible 'partition' carved from a VG
You format and mount the LV like a normal partition.
All lessons in this course
- Disk Partitioning and Formatting
- Mounting File Systems
- Monitoring Disk Usage
- Logical Volume Management (LVM)