Physical volumes

A disk must be designated as a physical volume and be put into an available state before it can be assigned to a volume group.

A physical volume has certain configuration and identification information written on it. This information includes a physical volume identifier that is unique to the system.

The LVM can make use of the additional space that a redundant array of identical disks (RAID) can add to a logical unit number (LUN), by adding physical partitions to the physical volume associated with the LUN.