Logical Volume Manager (LVM)
----------------------------
-include::attributes.txt[]
+ifdef::wiki[]
+:pve-toplevel:
+endif::wiki[]
Most people install {pve} directly on a local disk. The {pve}
-installation CD offers several options for local disk management. The
-current default setup uses LVM and 'ext4' for the root
-partition. LVM-thin is used for VM images, because this has efficient
-support for snapshots and clones.
+installation CD offers several options for local disk management, and
+the current default setup uses LVM. The installer let you select a
+single disk for such setup, and uses that disk as physical volume for
+the **V**olume **G**roup (VG) `pve`. The following output is from a
+test installation using a small 8GB disk:
+----
+# pvs
+ PV VG Fmt Attr PSize PFree
+ /dev/sda3 pve lvm2 a-- 7.87g 876.00m
+# vgs
+ VG #PV #LV #SN Attr VSize VFree
+ pve 1 3 0 wz--n- 7.87g 876.00m
+----
+
+The installer allocates three **L**ogical **V**olumes (LV) inside this
+VG:
+
+----
+# lvs
+ LV VG Attr LSize Pool Origin Data% Meta%
+ data pve twi-a-tz-- 4.38g 0.00 0.63
+ root pve -wi-ao---- 1.75g
+ swap pve -wi-ao---- 896.00m
+----
+
+root:: Formatted as `ext4`, and contains the operation system.
+
+swap:: Swap partition
+
+data:: This volume uses LVM-thin, and is used to store VM
+images. LVM-thin is preferable for this task, because it offers
+efficient support for snapshots and clones.
+
+Hardware
+~~~~~~~~
+
+We highly recommend to use a hardware RAID controller (with BBU) for
+such setups. This increases performance, provides redundancy, and make
+disk replacements easier (hot-pluggable).
+
+LVM itself does not need any special hardware, and memory requirements
+are very low.
+
+
+Bootloader
+~~~~~~~~~~
+
+We install two boot loaders by default. The first partition contains
+the standard GRUB boot loader. The second partition is an **E**FI **S**ystem
+**P**artition (ESP), which makes it possible to boot on EFI systems.
projects / pve-docs.git / blobdiff