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Systems & Data Center · Intermediate

Physical Volume (PV)

In LVM, a disk or partition initialized with pvcreate so it can contribute storage to a volume group.

Definition

A PV holds LVM metadata and is divided into physical extents (PEs), the allocation units given to logical volumes. Commands pvs and pvdisplay show PV details.

Example

pvcreate /dev/nvme1n1 prepares a whole NVMe disk for LVM.

Exam tip

A PV must exist before it can be added to a VG with vgcreate or vgextend.

Related terms