Wollo University

Kombolcha Institute of Technology (KIOT)

Department of Information Technology
Computer Networking and Communication Program
System Administration
Seminar on
LVM & RAID concepts
BY

Submitted to: Dr. SASI (PhD)

2022G.C 1
 At the end of this Lessons, you will be able to understand
 Introduction to LVM concepts
 What is LVM ?  RAID levels
 Why use LVM?  RAID implementations
 LVM Structure  Software and Hardware RAID

 LVM System Layer  Advantages and Disadvantages of

 Basic Terms of LVM RAID

 LVM Commands
 LVM Components
 LVM Features
 What is RAID?
 Characteristics of RAID
 How RAID is organized?
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 Introduction to LVM concepts
 It provides a higher level view of the disk storage on the computer
system than the traditional view of the disks.
 It is a more flexible approach to managing disk storage space.
 It is used to display information about volumes and potential
targets, how to create and destroy volumes of various types.
 It is a device framework that provides logical volume management
for the Linux kernel.
 it allows for the collection of multiple physical hard drives and
partitions into a single volume.
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 What is LVM?
LVM stands for Logical Volume Management.
LVM created in Linux.
It combines partitions, increasing throughput and making it simpler
to resize and move storage volumes as needed.
 It is a tool for logical volume management which includes
allocating disks.
With LVM, a hard drive or set of hard drives is allocated to one or
more physical volumes.

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 The physical volumes are combined into logical volumes, with the
exception of the /boot partition.
 The /boot partition cannot be on a logical volume group because
the boot loader cannot read it.

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 The volume groups can be divided into logical volumes.
 It assignees mount point, such as /home and / and file system
types, such as ext2 or ext4.
 When partitions reach their full capacity, free space from the
volume group can be added to the logical volume to increase the
size of the partition.

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 Why Use LVM ?
 For the easier management of physical storage devices.
 Allows file systems to be easily resized as needed.
 With traditional storage, three 1 TB disks are handled individually.
 With LVM, those same three disks are considered to be 3 TB of
aggregated storage capacity.

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 Advantages of using logical volume management (LVM)

 It allows efficiently manage and utilize your physical disk space.

 Provides a higher-level view of the disk storage
 more flexibility in allocating storage to applications and users
 It is used to increases the availability of your data.
 Increased abstraction, flexibility, and control.
 Logical volumes can have meaningful names like databases or root-
backup.

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 Disadvantages using logical volume management (LVM)
 The main disadvantage of LVM is that it adds another layer to the
storage system.
 While the overhead of LVM is usually small, any decrease in
performance can be critical on busy systems.

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 LVM Structure
 Logical Volume Management enables the combining of multiple
individual hard drives and/or disk partitions into a single volume
group.
 That volume group can then be subdivided into logical volumes or
used as a single large volume.
 Regular file systems, such as EXT3 or EXT4, can then be created
on a logical volume

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 LVM System Layer
 LVM is a very cool volume management tool.
 It can be used for a variety of tasks.

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 LVM Layer 1: Physical Volumes
 The bottom layer
 Consists of disks, partition. or RAID arrays
 LVM Layer 2: Volume Groups
 Create using physical volumes
 Consist of one or more physical volumes

 LVM Layer 3: Logical Volumes

 Created from the space within volume groups

 Are the LVM equivalent of partitions

 Can hold arbitrary file systems or swap space 12

 CONT(…)
 Basic Terms of LVM
 LVM commands start with letter that make it clear at which level
of abstraction they operate
 Pv commands manipulate physical volumes
 Vg commands manipulate volume groups
 Lv commands manipulate logical volumes

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 LVM Commands
 How to create a LVM in Linux, these are the below steps to be
followed.
 Select or identify the correct disks to be used for LVM.
 Create a Physical Volumes (PV) on the disk.
 Create the Volume Group(VG) on the Physical Volumes
 Create Logical Volumes(LV) on the Volume Group
 Create a file system for the logical volumes

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CONT(…)

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 Creating a Physical Volumes from hard drive
 pvcreate /dev/sda1 – create a physical volume from sda1

 Displaying the physical volume

 There are three commands you can use to display properties of

LVM physical volumes.

 pvs

 pvdisplay
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 pvscan
 CONT(…)
The pvs command provides physical volume information in a

configurable form, displaying one line per physical volume.

 Pvdisplay display detailed information of physical volumes

Check the current size of the physical volume on the disk.

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 Create Volume Group (VG) on the Physical Volumes

 Volume groups are nothing but a pool of storage that consists of

one or more physical volumes.
 vgcreate vag01 /dev/sda1: create a volume group from one drives

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 vgdisplay vg1: Display details on a volume group

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Creating the Logical Volumes
 The VG can be subdivided into one or more Logical Volumes
(LVs).
 The VG has a total capacity, and then some part of that capacity
is allocated to a Logical Volume.
 The lvcreate command carves storage capacity from a VG.
 There are a few options to be aware of.

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 The syntax for the lvcreate command is as follows:
 Lvcreate -n [ logical volume name ] -L [ logical volume size]
[ name of the volume group where the lv to be created it].
 Here is the command to create a 20M Logical Volume named lv02
carved from the vag01 Volume Group:
 Lvcreate -n lv01 –L 20M vag01

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 we created the vag01 Volume Group from one Physical
Volumes, /dev/sda1.
 You can use the lvdisplay command to see the Logical Volume's
configuration.

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 LVM Components

Linux file system is basically inflexible

It is difficult to modify partitions on a running system

LVM provides a virtual pool of memory space

 Called a volume group

 From which logical volumes can be generated if needed

LVM lets you resize the physical media during operation

Physical volumes are combined to a super unit

Referred to the volume group
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Figure LVM Components 24

 LVM Features
You can combine several hard disks or partitions

You can enlarge a logical volume when free space is exhausted

You can add hard disks to the volume group in a running

system

You can add logical volumes in a running system

You can use several hard disks with improved performance in

the RAID 0 (striping) mode

You can add up to 256 logical volumes

The Snapshot feature enables consistent backups 25

What is RAID?

 RAID is an acronym for Redundant Array of Independent or Inexpensive

Disks.
 way of combining several independent and relatively small disks into a
single storage of a large size.
 It is a technology that is used to increase the performance and/or reliability
of data storage.
 The disks can be combined into the array in different ways which are
known as RAID levels.

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Discuses the following main concepts

Types of RAID

What type to Use

Disk Issues

Hardware vs. Software RAID

Advantages and disadvantages of RAID

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 Characteristics of RAID
 Fault-tolerance which is the ability to survive of one or several disk
failures.
 Performance which shows the change in the read and write speed of
the entire array as compared to a single disk.
 The capacity of the array which is determined by the amount of user
data that can be written to the array.
 The array capacity depends on the RAID level
 Does not always match the sum of the sizes of the RAID member
disks.
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 RAID storage techniques
 The main methods of storing data in the array are:
 Striping : splitting the flow of data into blocks of a certain size
called block size then writing of these blocks across the RAID
one by one.
 Mirroring : It is a storage technique in which the identical copies
of data are stored on the RAID members simultaneously.
 Parity: It is a storage technique which is utilized striping and
checksum methods.

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 RAID levels
 RAID 0 - striping
 RAID 1 - mirroring
 RAID 3 - Striping plus Dedicated Parity
 RAID 5- striping with parity
 RAID 6- striping with double parity
 RAID 10- combining mirroring and striping

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 RAID 0 - based on striping.
 It doesn't provide fault tolerance but increases the system
performance (high read and write speed).
 In a RAID 0 system data are split up into blocks that get written
across all the drives in the array.
 Not technically RAID, but a RAID card is used to implement.
 Data is striped between disks. Improves I/O in most cases.

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 RAID level 1 – Mirroring
 It utilizes mirroring technique, increases read speed in some
cases, and provide fault tolerance in the loss of no more than one
member disk.
 Data are stored twice by writing them to both the data drive (and
set of data drives) and a mirror drive (or set of drives).
 Disks are mirrored, data is written to both disks at any time. One
disk can be lost without losing data.

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 Disks are mirrored, data is written to both disks at any time.
 One disk can be lost without losing data

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 RAID 3 - Striping Dedicated Parity
 Data is written across multiple disks (striping).
 A dedicated disk is used for parity. Recovering from remaining
disks plus parity disk.
 Lost parity disk = lost RAID array. Fast I/O. it is also similar to
RAID 5

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RAID 5:- Striping plus Distributed Parity
 RAID 5 is the most common secure RAID level.
 It requires at least 3 drives but can work with up to 16.
 Data blocks are striped across the drives and on one drive a
parity checksum of all the block data is written.
 can be achieved in software, a hardware controller is
recommended.

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 Data is written across multiple disks (striping).
 Parity is written across all disks.
 Most popular type of RAID after RAID 1.
 Can lose any 1 disk (set of 3)

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 RAID level 6 – Striping with double parity
 Similar to RAID 5 but uses two different parity functions.

 The read speed is the same as in RAID 5.

 Like with RAID 5, read data transactions are very fast.

 If two drives fail, you still have access to all data, even while the

failed drives are being replaced.

 So RAID 6 is more secure than RAID 5.

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 Data is written across multiple disks (striping).
 Parity is written across all disks multiple times.
 Fixes issues with RAID 5. Can lose any 2 disk (set of 4).
 Fixes issue with 1TB+ drives.

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RAID level 10 – combining RAID 1 & RAID 0
 It is possible to combine the advantages and disadvantages of
RAID 0 and RAID 1 in one single system.
 This is a nested or hybrid RAID configuration.
 It provides security by mirroring all data on secondary drives
while using striping across each set of drives to speed up data
transfers.

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 Data is mirrored in multiple sets and sets are striped.
 Provides performance and fault tolerance.
 Can lose multiple disks as long as no one mirror loses all disks.
 Requires more disks for same storage space.
 Referred to as nested or hybrid RAID

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 RAID implementations
 RAID can be created by two different ways:
 With the use of operating system drivers, so called software RAID.
 With the use of special hardware, so called hardware RAID.
 Software RAID
 Software RAID is one of the cheapest RAID solutions
 Software RAID is created based on the user's computer and
therefore it uses the host system CPU for implementation

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Hardware RAID

 In general, hardware RAID is more transparent to the user, and

disk replacement is straightforward:

 remove defective disk
 install new disk
 RAID controller detects this and starts rebuilding on new disk

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 Hardware RAID is created using separate hardware.
 Basically there are two options:
 Inexpensive RAID chip possibly built into the motherboard,
 More expensive option with a complex standalone RAID
controller
 A hardware RAID has some advantages over a software RAID, such
as:
 doesn't use CPU of the host computer
 allows user to create boot partitions
 handles errors better, 43
 CONT(…)
 Advantages and Disadvantages of RAID
 Advantages
 DATA loss is prevented due to the fact that data can be recovered
from the disk that are not failed.
 An improvement in cost-effectiveness because lower-priced disks
are used in large numbers.
 The use of multiple hard drives enables RAID to improve on the
performance of a single hard drive.
 RAID is fault tolerant because in most of the RAID level's data is
redundant in multiple disks. 44
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 Disadvantages

 When a drive fails, the probability that another drive in the array
will also soon fail rises, which would likely result in data loss.
 Because drives have much greater capacity now than when RAID
was first implemented, it takes a lot longer to rebuild failed
drives.
 If a disk failure occurs, there is a chance the remaining disks may
contain bad sectors or unreadable data

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