What is Logical Volume Manager?

Logical Volume Manager (LVM) is a storage management tool for Linux and other Unix-like operating systems. It provides administrators with more flexibility in how they allocate storage space on a system compared to simply using physical partitions.

Some key capabilities LVM provides include:

• Creating logical volumes out of underlying physical volumes (hard drives or partitions)
• Dynamically growing, shrinking and migrating logical volumes as needed without downtime
• Creating volume groups out of multiple physical volumes which appear as a single disk for file systems
• Striping and mirroring capabilities for improved performance or redundancy

With LVM, an administrator can combine partitions and entire drives into a volume group which can then be divided into logical volumes. The file system sees a logical volume as a physical device but the administrator can dynamically change its size or location as needed. This avoids having to directly manage partitions and makes better use of the available storage space.

LVM is commonly used in Linux servers and infrastructure to create flexible storage configurations that can easily be adapted to changing storage requirements. It allows more efficient use of storage and simplifies storage management tasks.

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