Logical volume management

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In computer storage, logical volume management or LVM provides a method of allocating space on mass-storage devices that is more flexible than conventional partitioning schemes to store volumes. In particular, a volume manager can concatenate, stripe together or otherwise combine partitions (or block devices in general) into larger virtual partitions that administrators can re-size or move, potentially without interrupting system use.

Volume management represents just one of many forms of storage virtualization; its implementation takes place in a layer in the device-driver stack of an operating system (OS) (as opposed to within storage devices or in a network).