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Actual situation: I'm the administrator of a virtual machine. The virtual machine is a Debian. This machine will be mainly a storage machine with different services (svn, ftp... ), and a webserver. The hardware under this VM is a Sun Disk Array with 2 redundancy disks. But this is not really important. I have no access to the hardware layer. The VM has two devices 1 for the main filesystem and 1 for the storage as I could see them through fdisk.

I would like to create different dedicated filesystems, some for the (many) users, some for some specific services. The latter will be probably managed with quotas.

Is it possible, safe, and has good performance, to use LVM to "divide" the storage volume, which is seen from the VM as a normal device (/dev/sdb)?

If it is possible, then which strategy would be the best in your opinion: LVM or many different loop devices?


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closed as not constructive by Sven, Scott Pack, Ward, Michael Hampton, Khaled May 2 '13 at 11:07


1 Answer 1

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Why would you use a loop device in the first place? You would use LVM on a physical machine and there is no reason to do something else on a VM.

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Thanks for the replay. Unfortunately I cannot access or manage the physical machine, because it is provided to me from our IT group. They have nor the time, neither the will to make such a custom config for us. So I'm forced to think to the further configuration steps by myself. :( –  GLB May 1 '13 at 11:03
What? You have the storage volume exported as /dev/sdb on your VM. Just use this as a physical volume (PV) for an LVM volume group (VG) and create logical volumes on it to store your data. The IT team has nothing to do with it. –  Sven May 1 '13 at 11:05
What I mean is that the VM is provided to me as it is, with its main fs, and the other device for storage. I would like, instead, to customize strictly the service for each user, because the space is not endless, and also because I would like to force some best practices amongst my collegues. :) –  GLB May 1 '13 at 11:08
You have this "other device" for storage. It's empty right now and you want to divide it somehow, right? If yes: Use LVM to do this. If you just want to limit the storage available to a user, look into quotas instead. –  Sven May 1 '13 at 11:11
Yes exactly. I was just looking for suggestion on which should be the best solution (I'm just a developer not strictly a sysadm. I read the manuals, but I also thought that it was better ask some tips before to act). Thanks for your quick answer. :) –  GLB May 1 '13 at 11:11
