VolumeManager

VolumeManager is a software component responsible for managing storage volumes on a computer system. It provides a centralized interface to create, resize, mount, snapshot, and delete logical volumes that may be built from one or more physical or virtual block devices. By abstracting the underlying hardware, a volume manager enables flexible storage provisioning and consistent data access across different file systems and hardware configurations.

A typical implementation includes a kernel component that tracks devices and I/O paths, plus a user-space management layer that coordinates actions, enforces policies, and exposes an API or command interface. The management layer often integrates with device-metection subsystems, partitioning tools, and filesystem services, and may offer features such as grouping of physical volumes into logical collections, thin provisioning, snapshots, online resizing, and encryption integration.

Common deployments appear in Linux environments with logical volume management, Windows environments with dynamic disks, and various UNIX-like systems with native volume-management facilities. In cloud and virtualization contexts, volume managers interact with software-defined storage and virtual block devices to enable rapid reconfiguration of storage pools, resize operations, and live data mobility without interrupting service in some configurations.

VolumeManager concepts are foundational to storage virtualization and data-center workflows, bridging lower-level block devices and higher-level storage services. Related topics include logical volume managers, dynamic disks, and platform-specific implementations of volume management.