LVM questions (RHEL3) and considerations for LVM2 (in future RHEL4?)

["Patrick Bakker" <patrick vanbelle com>]

Hi.

I have 3, 36 GB, SCSI hard drives in a RAID 5 configuration managed by a
battery-backed Dell PERC RAID controller. I have 1 hot-spare hard drive.

I plan to store a database for my J2EE application and serve
high-resolution
image files over a SAMBA share on this effective 72 GB. At present I
have an abundance of storage space for the current size of the database
and the number of pictures so I am not sure how to best allocate out the
space.

I am wondering if it is smart to make some basic partitions:
	boot (100 MB partition)
	root (1 GB partition)
	var (1 GB partition)
	tmp (1 GB partition)
	swap (2 GB partition = 2 GB of RAM)
 and use LVM to create some volume groups:
	home (1 GB)
	usr (8 GB)
	database (8 GB)
	pictures (30 GB)
 for a total of:
	50 GB
 leaving 20 GB for future expansion.

I have heard that there are some incompatibilities between LVM and LVM2.
Will I have any problems if I use LVM now to upgrade to LVM2 when RHEL 4
comes out?

I have also read that LVM2 is an alternative to EVMS. Is there an LVM2
equivalent to EVMS console and GUI tools?

And more generally is LVM considered stable enough to resize volume
groups on a production system?


---
Patrick