VERITAS Volume Manager 3.1 Administrator's Guide

Introduction to Volume Manager
Volume Manager Overview
Chapter 1 29
Volume Manager Overview
The Volume Manager uses objects to do storage management. The two
types of objects used by Volume Manager are physical objects and
virtual objects.
• physical objects
Volume Manager uses two physical objects : physical disks and
partitions. Partitions are created on the physical disks (on systems
that use partitions).
• virtual objects
Volume Manager creates virtual objects, called volumes. Each
volume records and retrieves data from one or more physical disks.
Volumes are accessed by a file system, a database, or other
applications in the same way that physical disks are accessed.
Volumes are also composed of other virtual objects that are used to
change the volume configuration. Volumes and their virtual
components are called virtual objects.