SGI InfiniteStorage Volume Manager XVM

SGI's XVM Volume Manager provides a logical organization to disk storage that enables an administrator to combine underlying physical storage devices into a single logical unit, known as a logical volume. A logical volume allows a filesystem to be larger than the size of a physical device. Using logical volumes can also increase I/O performance and data protection because a volume can be striped across more than one physical device and logical volumes can be used to mirror data on different devices.

XVM volume management is integrated with SGI InfiniteStorage Filesystem XFS® and CXFS™. Fully embraced by the open source community, XFS provides full 64-bit file capabilities and easily scales from gigabytes to exabytes to handle extremely large files. CXFS extends XFS into a shared environment allowing simultaneous filesystem access to multiple systems running different operating systems. CXFS provides no-compromise data sharing, enhanced workflow, and reduced costs in data-intensive environments. The XFS and CXFS file systems are integrated with XVM volume management, guaranteed rate I/O, and journaling technology for fast, reliable recovery.


Topic Specifications
Topology Support
  • Mirroring, striping, concatenation are available
  • Each volume can contain 3 sub-volumes: real-time, log, and data
  • File system journal can be stored on a separate partition for maximum performance
  • Separate real-time partition for XFS filesystems
Maximum Disks per File System
  • Each sub volume can be independently mirrored up to 4 copies, striped up to 128 ways, and concatenated up to 100 volume extents
Dynamic Change
  • Add or remove a mirror, grow a volume, replace failed elements of a mirrored volume
Solid State Disk Support
  • An XVM volume can be created that concatenates a slice of NAND (Solid State Disk) or DRAM based storage with rotating disk storage. When combined with a XFS or CXFS filesystem, filesystem metadata can be located on the NAND or DRAM storage accelerating filesystem administrative tasks that are small, latency sensitive operations, and using the rotating disk media for larger, bandwidth and capacity intensive operations
  • Additionally XVM can be used to create an external log device from NAND or DRAM storage accelerating filesystem log operations.