Garanti del Talento

dgt_sys04 – Disks and filesystems

Module Title: dgt_sys04 – Disks and filesystems

Overview:
This module, “Disks and filesystems,” is designed for Linux system administrators and IT professionals who wish to deepen their understanding of disk management and file systems. Throughout the program, participants will gain the theoretical knowledge needed to manage storage infrastructure on Linux-based systems, and the practical ability to direct that work in natural language and verify it.

Module Objectives:
– Understand what essential tools like blkid, fdisk, parted, and mkfs do when partitioning and formatting disks, so you can read and approve the commands the machine proposes.
– Understand various filesystem types such as ext4, xfs, btrfs, and more.
– Differentiate between ext4 and XFS file systems and comprehend the significance of journaling in maintaining data integrity.
– Explore Logical Volume Management LVM to optimize storage management.

Key Topics:

  1. Disk Partitioning and Management Tools:
  2. Learn what blkid reports about block device attributes and filesystem UUIDs.
  3. Understand fdisk, a traditional partition editor, its syntax and operations, well enough to check what the machine is about to do.
  4. Explore parted, an advanced tool that supports GPT GUID Partition Table and MBR Master Boot Record.

  5. See how file systems are created with mkfs to format partitions, and which options matter.

  6. File Systems:

  7. Study of the different filesystem types available in Linux, including ext4, xfs, btrfs, etc.

  8. In-depth analysis of ext4 and XFS:

    • Understand the architectural differences between these two popular filesystems.
    • Learn how ext4’s journaling feature helps prevent data corruption and enhance system recovery capabilities.
    • Learn about XFS’s scalability and performance advantages in handling large files and volumes.

  9. Journaling File Systems:

  10. Explore the concept of journaling, its role in enhancing file system reliability, and preventing data loss during unexpected shutdowns.

  11. Compare how ext4 implements journaling and its impact on performance and stability.

  12. Logical Volume Management LVM:

  13. Introduction to LVM as a flexible disk management solution allowing dynamic volume resizing.
  14. Practical sessions in which you ask the machine to create, resize and manage logical volumes, and review its use of tools like pvcreate, vgcreate, and lvcreate.
  15. Learn how LVM integrates with filesystems for improved storage allocation.

Practical Sessions:
Participants apply the concepts to real-world scenarios in virtual environments, without risking production data, and always in natural language. You tell the machine what you need (“add a 20 GB disk, create a single GPT partition, format it as XFS and mount it persistently”), then check the plan before it runs: is it touching the right device, is the partition table the one you asked for, does the fstab entry use the UUID? The same applies to configuring LVM and switching between filesystem types. Disk operations are unforgiving, which is exactly why knowing the theory is what lets you catch the machine’s mistakes before they destroy data.

Target Audience:
This module is suitable for system administrators, network engineers, IT professionals responsible for Linux server maintenance, and anyone who manages storage on Linux.

By the end of this module, participants will have the knowledge needed to manage complex disk environments effectively, guiding the machine and verifying its work to ensure optimal performance, reliability and data integrity.
The students can push their exercises to the Academy DevOps & SRE Git project. For this module, create a folder with your username as its name in the following subfolder: https://github.com/Garanti-Del-Talento/gdt_academy