• With LVM, it is possible to add hard disks or LVs in a running system. However,
this requires hot-swappable hardware.
• It is possible to activate a "striping mode" that distributes the data stream of a LV
over several PVs. If these PVs reside on different disks, the read and write perfor-
mance is enhanced, as with RAID 0.
• The snapshot feature enables consistent backups (especially for servers) of the running
system.
With these features, LVM is ready for heavily used home PCs or small servers. LVM
is well-suited for the user with a growing data stock (as in the case of databases, music
archives, or user directories). This would allow le systems that are larger than the
physical hard disk. Another advantage of LVM is that up to 256 LVs can be added.
However, working with LVM is different from working with conventional partitions.
Instructions and further information about conguring LVM is available in the ofcial
LVM HOWTO at http://tldp.org/HOWTO/LVM-HOWTO/.
Starting from Kernel version 2.6, LVM version 2 is available, which is backward-
compatible with the previous LVM and enables the continued management of old volume
groups. When creating new volume groups, decide whether to use the new format or
the backward-compatible version. LVM 2 does not require any kernel patches. It makes
use of the device mapper integrated in kernel 2.6. This kernel only supports LVM ver-
sion 2. Therefore, when talking about LVM, this section always refers to LVM version 2.
3.2.2 LVM Conguration with YaST
The YaST LVM conguration can be reached from the YaST Expert Partitioner (see
Section 3.1, “Using the YaST Partitioner” (page 73)) within the Volume Management
item in the System View pane. The Expert Partitioner allows you to edit and delete ex-
isting partitions and also create new ones that need to be used with LVM. The rst task
is to create PVs that provide space to a volume group:
1
Select a hard disk from Hard Disks.
2
Change to the Partitions tab.
3
Click Add and enter the desired size of the PV on this disk.
86 Reference
