Partition

There are several ways to give the operating system access to the storage devices, this is a summery of possible methods and combinations of these.

MBR
Used for a long time to organize data, also called DOS-Partitions. Partition information is stored in the MBR of the device. Features:
 * widely spread and support in nearly all operating systems
 * very well documented
 * maximum of 4 primary partitions per device
 * maximum size of the device 2TB
 * using one as extended partition (of the 4 primary), it is possible to create additional logical partitions to work around the problem of only 4 partitions

Programs
To create/alter MBR partitions

GPT
In GUID partition system a small amount of disk space at the beginning of the device is used to store the partition information. Its main advantage is the supported size of storage devices and it creates a backup of the partition table at the end of the device.


 * widely spread and support in most modern operating systems
 * used to require the GRUB2 bootloader, but the functionality was backported to earlier versions
 * maximum of 128 primary partitions per device
 * maximum size of the device 9ZB

Programs
To create/alter GPT partitions

LVM
LVM is a complete suite to dynamically manage partitons, storage devices or other underlying systems as volumes.
 * widely spread and support in most modern operating systems
 * needs GRUB2 bootoader
 * maximum size of the device depends on the underlying systems limitations
 * maximum size of Logcial Volumes is 8 EB on 64bit Linux and 16TB on 32bit Linux
 * storage devices, raid system, network storage (e.g. iSCSI) can be used complete as Physical Volume (no need of partitioning)
 * it provides basic forms of redundancy like mirror, raid5 or stripset for performance

Programs
The following programs come with

ZFS
ZFS is a complete suite to dynamically manage storage and file system.


 * support in Linux (via ZFSOnLinux), Solaris, FreeBSD
 * needs GRUB2 bootoader
 * maximum size of a single zpool is 256 ZB
 * storage devices can be used complete as vdev (no need of partitioning)
 * zpools are created once and cannot be resized afterwards. Every volume has access to the full capacity of the zpool, this can be reduzed via quota.
 * it provides several forms of redundancy like mirror (also performance), raid5, raid6 or stripset for performance
 * comes with its own file system with features like compression, copy on write, deduplication.

Programs
The following programs come with