[CentOS] to lvm or not to lvm - why/when to use lvm

Fri Sep 27 16:08:44 UTC 2013
Blake Hudson <blake at ispn.net>

Antonio da Silva Martins Junior wrote the following on 9/26/2013 3:28 PM:
> Well, I think this is one of the big examples of what we can do with 
> LVM: http://www.greyoak.com/lvmdrive.html 

This seems like a great example of how LVM complicates the process of 
moving to a new disk. Without LVM, one can still simply use gparted to 
copy the data to the new drive and extend the existing partition and fs 
in a couple clicks. With CLI tools, that's dd/cp + parted + resize2fs. 
The number of commands is reduced by half or more of what was required 
with LVM.

The benefits with LVM seem to be the snapshot functionality and the 
(limited) spanning/mirroring raid logic. If you're not taking advantage 
of these features then I, personally, wouldn't recommend the additional 
obfuscation and complication that LVM adds.

--Blake