Planning Your LVM Configuration

For what purpose will you use a logical volume? For raw data or a file system? As a swap area or dump area? See “Setting Up Different Types of Logical Volumes”.

How big will you make a logical volume?

Does your data require high availability? If so, consider mirroring your logical volume across multiple disks, as described in “Increasing Data Availability Through Mirroring”. Also consider setting up spare disks to handle mirror failure, as described in “Increasing Disk Redundancy Through Disk Sparing”.

Is I/O performance very important to you? If so, consider striping your logical volumes across multiple disks, as described in “Increasing Performance Through Disk Striping”, and separating I/O channels, as described in “Increasing Performance Through I/O Channel Separation”. For additional recommendations for performance, read “Planning for Performance”.

Do you need to balance high availability and I/O performance? If so, consider striping and mirroring your logical volume, as described in “Increasing Data Availability Through Mirroring” and “Increasing Performance Through Disk Striping”.

Is it important to recover from disk failures quickly? If so, see “Planning for Recovery”.