Forum Discussion
NimbostratusPartition Vs Volumes .. Which one is better?
Hi
Which one is better? Is Volumes better than Partition? but how?
I know that Volume offer HD1.1-1.3 but Partition offer only HD1.1-1.2
and Volumes can upgrade Hotfix while box online but Partition must reboot into MOS.
Is there another advantage/disadvantage of these two?
Thank you
5 Replies
StephanMantheyNacreous
Since v10 you can use LVM (logical volume manager). Since v11 you have to.
In case you are still running v9, you have the option to choose between legacy partitions and new partitions. (And I guess you are about to re-install a v9, right?)
As you sooner or later want to migrate to v10, I would recommend to use the the newer partition style.
What_Lies_Bene1Cirrostratus
I believe you also need Volumes to use RAID. I'm guessing the main reason for the change is only known to F5 and perhaps for technical reasons unknown to us as the only other advantage I'm aware of is "...the ability to dynamically add physical disk space to a volume" which I don't believe you can actually do on an F5. Happy to be corrected.
LVM (Volumes) in general is far more powerful and flexible compared to the older partitions model. One thing that I believe the F5 does with LVM is dynamically generate volumes for things like mysql, when you switch provisioning roles, and also for installation targets. I haven't tested thoroughly, and they may still want you to reboot.
Also, depending on your provisioned modules' needs, you can delete installation targets to run certain combinations of modules (creating available space for them), but this can get you into trouble if you're not careful.
I believe that on VEs a second disk can be utilized based on the provisioned modules, with LVM behind the scenes making it very easy.
Redsetter_11030The other benefit is not having to re-format and re-partition when the new version of TMOS requires more drive space configured as could be seen when upgrading from early 10 to later 10. If you don't have a requirement to run v9.x, bite the bullet and flip over to Volumes; way more flexible when upgrading (also volume formatting is mandatory for v11.x)- What_Lies_Bene1Interesting and thanks, but where does that extra drive space come from I wonder?
