LVM vs. ZFS
LVM is one of Linux’s leading volume managers and is alongside a filesystem for dynamic resizing of the system disk space.
ZFS is a filesystem and volume manager combined. This is a major difference because ZFS organizes and manages your data comprehensively.
LVM
- LVM is not a filesystem.
- LVM facilitates the aggregation of multiple separate hard drives or disk partitions into a single volume group (VG).
- LVM takes one or more hard drives and allocates them to physical volumes (PVs)
- LVM can also include RAID functionality and supports RAID 1, 5, and 6.
- Resize the VGs by adding or ejecting physical volumes.
- LVM also allows you to move LVs between PVs.
- LVM uses copy-on-write and can create read-only or read/write snapshots to protect your data.
- If you’re using Linux, LVM is the more native choice and generally has better support from Linux distributions.
The logical volumes facilitate dynamic volume resizing. LVM can manage hard disk farms with the addition or replacement of disks without system disruption. It can also efficiently resize filesystems at a personal computing level.
ZFS
- ZFS creates zpools, pooled data from multiple physical disks that it manages as a unified storage pool.
- ZFS has high read/write efficiency, facilitated by its advanced volume management.
ZFS can be more resource-intensive, specifically when it comes to RAM usage. Since LVM is a more lightweight solution, it may be a better fit for systems with limited resources.