What is LVM2?
LVM2 (Logical Volume Manager 2) is an open-source logical volume manager for the Linux kernel that manages disk drives and similar mass-storage devices. LVM provides a layer of abstraction over physical storage, allowing administrators to create logical storage volumes that can be easily resized and moved as needed.
Some key capabilities of LVM include:
- Creating logical volumes out of physical storage devices and partitions for mounting file systems
- Resizing, moving and renaming logical volumes on the fly while file systems are mounted
- Creating volume groups that combine multiple physical volumes into a pool of storage
- Taking snapshots of file systems for backups
- Stripping or mirroring data across multiple disks for performance or redundancy
LVM volumes can be resized to any size, span multiple disks and physical locations, and can be extended easily on an active system with minimal downtime. This gives administrators much more flexibility in managing storage than using raw disk partitions. LVM is commonly used in Linux server environments for creating flexible storage configurations.
LVM2 is the successor to the original LVM tools. It improves on various limitations of LVM while maintaining backward compatibility. LVM2 continues to be actively developed as a core Linux storage management technology.