Figure 2.1, "Physical Volume layout" shows the layout of an LVM physical volume. The LVM label is on the second sector, followed by the metadata area, followed by the usable space on the device.

LVM allows you to create physical volumes out of disk partitions. It is generally recommended that you create a single partition that covers the whole disk to label as an LVM physical volume for the following reasons:

Although it is not recommended, there may be specific circumstances when you will need to divide a disk into separate LVM physical volumes. For example, on a system with few disks it may be necessary to move data around partitions when you are migrating an existing system to LVM volumes. Additionally, if you have a very large disk and want to have more than one volume group for administrative purposes then it is necessary to partition the disk. If you do have a disk with more than one partition and both of those partitions are in the same volume group, take care to specify which partitions are to be included in a logical volume when creating striped volumes.

A linear volume aggregates space from one or more physical volumes into one logical volume. For example, if you have two 60GB disks, you can create a 120GB logical volume. The physical storage is concatenated.

Creating a linear volume assigns a range of physical extents to an area of a logical volume in order. For example, as shown in Figure 2.2, "Extent Mapping" logical extents 1 to 99 could map to one physical volume and logical extents 100 to 198 could map to a second physical volume. From the point of view of the application, there is one device that is 198 extents in size.

The physical volumes that make up a logical volume do not have to be the same size. Figure 2.3, "Linear Volume with Unequal Physical Volumes" shows volume group VG1 with a physical extent size of 4MB. This volume group includes 2 physical volumes named PV1 and PV2. The physical volumes are divided into 4MB units, since that is the extent size. In this example, PV1 is 100 extents in size (400MB) and PV2 is 200 extents in size (800MB). You can create a linear volume any size between 1 and 300 extents (4MB to 1200MB). In this example, the linear volume named LV1 is 300 extents in size.

You can configure more than one linear logical volume of whatever size you require from the pool of physical extents. Figure 2.4, "Multiple Logical Volumes" shows the same volume group as in Figure 2.3, "Linear Volume with Unequal Physical Volumes", but in this case two logical volumes have been carved out of the volume group: LV1, which is 250 extents in size (1000MB) and LV2 which is 50 extents in size (200MB).

When you write data to an LVM logical volume, the file system lays the data out across the underlying physical volumes. You can control the way the data is written to the physical volumes by creating a striped logical volume. For large sequential reads and writes, this can improve the efficiency of the data I/O.

Striping enhances performance by writing data to a predetermined number of physical volumes in round-robin fashion. With striping, I/O can be done in parallel. In some situations, this can result in near-linear performance gain for each additional physical volume in the stripe.

The following illustration shows data being striped across three physical volumes. In this figure:

In a striped logical volume, the size of the stripe cannot exceed the size of an extent.

Striped logical volumes can be extended by concatenating another set of devices onto the end of the first set. In order extend a striped logical volume, however, there must be enough free space on the underlying physical volumes that make up the volume group to support the stripe. For example, if you have a two-way stripe that uses up an entire volume group, adding a single physical volume to the volume group will not enable you to extend the stripe. Instead, you must add at least two physical volumes to the volume group. For more information on extending a striped volume, see Section 4.4.14.1, "Extending a Striped Volume".

A mirror maintains identical copies of data on different devices. When data is written to one device, it is written to a second device as well, mirroring the data. This provides protection for device failures. When one leg of a mirror fails, the logical volume becomes a linear volume and can still be accessed.

LVM supports mirrored volumes. When you create a mirrored logical volume, LVM ensures that data written to an underlying physical volume is mirrored onto a separate physical volume. With LVM, you can create mirrored logical volumes with multiple mirrors.

An LVM mirror divides the device being copied into regions that are typically 512KB in size. LVM maintains a small log which it uses to keep track of which regions are in sync with the mirror or mirrors. This log can be kept on disk, which will keep it persistent across reboots, or it can be maintained in memory.

Figure 2.6, "Mirrored Logical Volume" shows a mirrored logical volume with one mirror. In this configuration, the log is maintained on disk.

For information on creating and modifying mirrors, see Section 4.4.3, "Creating Mirrored Volumes".

As of the Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6.4 release, logical volumes can be thinly provisioned. This allows you to create logical volumes that are larger than the available extents. Using thin provisioning, you can manage a storage pool of free space, known as a thin pool, to be allocated to an arbitrary number of devices when needed by applications. You can then create devices that can be bound to the thin pool for later allocation when an application actually writes to the logical volume. The thin pool can be expanded dynamically when needed for cost-effective allocation of storage space.

By using thin provisioning, a storage administrator can over-commit the physical storage, often avoiding the need to purchase additional storage. For example, if ten users each request a 100GB file system for their application, the storage administrator can create what appears to be a 100GB file system for each user but which is backed by less actual storage that is used only when needed. When using thin provisioning, it is important that the storage administrator monitor the storage pool and add more capacity if it starts to become full.

To make sure that all available space can be used, LVM supports data discard. This allows for re-use of the space that was formerly used by a discarded file or other block range.

For information on creating thin volumes, refer to Section 4.4.4, "Creating Thinly-Provisioned Logical Volumes".

Thin volumes provide support for a new implementation of copy-on-write (COW) snapshot logical volumes, which allow many virtual devices to share the same data in the thin pool. For information on thin snapsnot volumes, refer to Section 2.3.6, "Thinly-Provisioned Snapshot Volumes".

The LVM snapshot feature provides the ability to create virtual images of a device at a particular instant without causing a service interruption. When a change is made to the original device (the origin) after a snapshot is taken, the snapshot feature makes a copy of the changed data area as it was prior to the change so that it can reconstruct the state of the device.

Because a snapshot copies only the data areas that change after the snapshot is created, the snapshot feature requires a minimal amount of storage. For example, with a rarely updated origin, 3-5 % of the origin's capacity is sufficient to maintain the snapshot.

The size of the snapshot governs the amount of space set aside for storing the changes to the origin volume. For example, if you made a snapshot and then completely overwrote the origin the snapshot would have to be at least as big as the origin volume to hold the changes. You need to dimension a snapshot according to the expected level of change. So for example a short-lived snapshot of a read-mostly volume, such as /usr, would need less space than a long-lived snapshot of a volume that sees a greater number of writes, such as /home.

If a snapshot runs full, the snapshot becomes invalid, since it can no longer track changes on the origin volume. You should regularly monitor the size of the snapshot. Snapshots are fully resizeable, however, so if you have the storage capacity you can increase the size of the snapshot volume to prevent it from getting dropped. Conversely, if you find that the snapshot volume is larger than you need, you can reduce the size of the volume to free up space that is needed by other logical volumes.

When you create a snapshot file system, full read and write access to the origin stays possible. If a chunk on a snapshot is changed, that chunk is marked and never gets copied from the original volume.

There are several uses for the snapshot feature:

For information on creating snapshot volumes, see Section 4.4.5, "Creating Snapshot Volumes".

As of the Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6 release, you can use the --merge option of the lvconvert command to merge a snapshot into its origin volume. One use for this feature is to perform system rollback if you have lost data or files or otherwise need to restore your system to a previous state. After you merge the snapshot volume, the resulting logical volume will have the origin volume's name, minor number, and UUID and the merged snapshot is removed. For information on using this option, see Section 4.4.7, "Merging Snapshot Volumes".

The Red Hat Enterprise Linux release 6.4 version of LVM provides support for thinly-provisioned snapshot volumes. Thin snapshot volumes allow many virtual devices to be stored on the same data volume. This simplifies administration and allows for the sharing of data between snapshot volumes.

As for all LVM snapshot volumes, as well as all thin volumes, thin snapshot volumes are not supported across the nodes in a cluster. The snapshot volume must be exclusively activated on only one cluster node.

Thin snapshot volumes provide the following benefits:

Although there are many advantages to using thin snapshot volumes, there are some use cases for which the older LVM snapshot volume feature may be more appropriate to your needs:

In general, you should consider the specific requirements of your site when deciding which snapshot format to use.

For information on configuring thin snapshot volumes, refer to Section 4.4.6, "Creating Thinly-Provisioned Snapshot Volumes".