The case against LVM

[Karl Larsen]

Ewan Mac Mahon wrote:
> On Wed, Aug 01, 2007 at 12:10:41PM +0930, Tim wrote:
>> On Wed, 2007-08-01 at 02:22 +0100, Ewan Mac Mahon wrote:
>>> I have a server with ~16Tb of storage that's shared amongst research
>>> groups in a university dept. Each group has their own filesystem, and
> <snip>
>>> That machines predecessor didn't use LVM and it was a nightmare to
>>> admin with free space fragmented all over the place. I wouldn't go
>>> back.

	There are issues about how you partition a giant hard drive like that. 
I forget just how many partitions your allowed but it is small compared 
to the size. I guess your the IT expert and you have REAL Experience to 
back your support for LVM.

>> I'm curious about two things:  Wouldn't resizing LVM involve fragmenting
>> the drive, in another way? 
> Only physically; if I allocate space to one filesystem, then create
> another, then extend the first one then the physical storage for the
> first one will be in two chunks with the second fs sitting between them.
> The point of LVM is that I don't need to care about it since it appears
> as a single logical space. 
> 
>> And, doesn't things like file quotas let you
>> stop some users from using all available space?
>>
> Up to a point, but group quotas are rather less straightforward, IMHO.
> 
> There's the further point that I have some additional storage to add to
> this system; once I've done that with LVM I can simply seamlessly extend
> any of the existing filesystems onto that storage; while you could
> probably divide up the pie with quotas, there'd be no way to make the
> whole pie bigger.
> 
> Ewan
> 
> 
	At my school the departments all have a computer that backs up all the 
computers in the departments. The Hard Drive(s) are smaller but do the job.

	At home I have a tiny 160 GB and I do not need LVM and in fact it makes 
for even more wasted space than using the old /.

-- 

	Karl F. Larsen, AKA K5DI
	Linux User
	#450462   http://counter.li.org.