Device and Storage Management
10 a.m., 12 June 2010
Reston Regional Library

The 21st century has proved a challenge to traditional POSIX (UNIX) platforms. Limited device and platform-eccentric support has driven the hardware-agnostic Linux solution to a new set of universal tools to managing devices and storage. Most of these solutions are designed to be automated without configuration and intervention by home users, while very flexible and powerful for Linux system and network administrators and engineers.

In this presentation, Bryan J Smith will cover the the following details to managing devices and storage in 21st century Linux:

General concepts:

• Disk labels, aka partition tables, and disk slices, aka partitions
• Device and storage mapping and presentation, volumes and filesystems
• Universally unique identifiers (UUIDs), including those physical and logical
• Legacy to contemporary POSIX approaches, standards and best practices

Linux tools:

• How the Linux kernel handles character and block device for storage access
  and operations
• The Linux Ext2/3/4, XFS, GFS/GFS2 and other filesystems
• How the Linux userspace assigns and accesses device filesystem (/dev) and
  common tools (udev, multipath, etc...), including the device mapper (DM)
• The hardware-agnostic Linux Logical Volume Manager (LVM) disk label

This presentation will both cover the concepts and evolution of device and storage
management as well as real-world implementation in both home user and enterprise
solutions.