There are several solutions for volume management on Linux.
The Debian installer offers two choices: regular partitions (not very flexible) and LVM (which is good for standalone servers).
This page compares those options and some of the others.
Volume manager |
Traditional partitioning |
CLVM (Redhat) |
VxVM (Veritas) |
||
Status in Debian |
Full support (*fdisk utilities) |
Full support |
RFA after etch |
? |
n/a - commercial package |
Debian installer |
Full support |
Full support |
|
|
|
Cluster safe |
Not safe to modify a partition table on a shared volume |
Not safe to modify VG metadata while more than one node is attached |
Yes |
Yes |
Yes |
Bad block relocation |
|
|
Yes |
|
|
Snapshots |
No |
Yes |
No |
|
|
Useful reading: a similar comparison is published at http://wiki.novell.com/index.php/Linux_Data_Management
CategorySystemAdministration | CategoryRedundant: merge to LVM