To begin, examine the current disk configurasion using fdisk -l. This command lists all available disks and their partitions. For example, you might see output similar to:

Disk /dev/sdb: 500 GB, 500000000000 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 60801 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes
Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
I/O size (minimum/optimal): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
Disk identifier: 0xabcdef12

   Device Boot      Start         End      Blocks   Id  System
/dev/sdb1               1       60801   488281250   8e  Linux LVM

If an existing LVM partition is present, you can remove it for demonstration purposes. Use fdisk /dev/sdb to enter the partition editor. Within the interactive prompt, delete the partition with the d command, then create a new one using n. Set it as a primary partition and accept default values for cylinder ranges. Change the partition type to Linux LVM (hex code 8e) with the t command. Write changes with w and update the kernel partition table using partprobe.

After partitioning, initialize the physical volume (PV) with pvcreate /dev/sdb1. Verify the PV creation by running pvscan or pvdisplay. For instance:

[root@server ~]# pvcreate /dev/sdb1
  Physical volume "/dev/sdb1" successfully created
[root@server ~]# pvscan
  PV /dev/sdb1                      lvm2 [500.00 GiB]
  Total: 1 [500.00 GiB] / in use: 0 [0   ] / in no VG: 1 [500.00 GiB]

Next, create a volume group (VG) named storage_vg that includes the PV: vgcreate storage_vg /dev/sdb1. Check the VG with vgscan or vgdisplay. The output might show:

[root@server ~]# vgcreate storage_vg /dev/sdb1
  Volume group "storage_vg" successfully created
[root@server ~]# vgdisplay
  --- Volume group ---
  VG Name               storage_vg
  System ID             
  Format                lvm2
  Metadata Areas        1
  Metadata Sequence No  1
  VG Access             read/write
  VG Status             resizable
  MAX LV                0
  Cur LV                0
  Open LV                0
  Max PV                0
  Cur PV                1
  Act PV                1
  VG Size               500.00 GiB
  PE Size               4.00 MiB
  Total PE              128000
  Alloc PE / Size       0 / 0   
  Free  PE / Size       128000 / 500.00 GiB
  VG UUID               abc12345-6789-def0-1234-56789abcdef0

Now, create a logical volume (LV) using all available physical extents (PEs). Use lvcreate -l 128000 -n data_lv storage_vg. Confirm the LV with lvdisplay:

[root@server ~]# lvcreate -l 128000 -n data_lv storage_vg
  Logical volume "data_lv" created
[root@server ~]# lvdisplay
  --- Logical volume ---
  LV Path                /dev/storage_vg/data_lv
  LV Name                data_lv
  VG Name                storage_vg
  LV UUID                12345678-90ab-cdef-1234-567890abcdef
  LV Write Access        read/write
  LV Creation host, time server, 2023-10-01 12:00:00 +0000
  LV Status              available
  # open                 0
  LV Size                500.00 GiB
  Current LE             128000
  Segments               1
  Allocation             inherit
  Read ahead sectors     auto
  - currently set to     256
  Block device           253:0

Format the LV with an ext4 filesystem: mkfs -t ext4 /dev/storage_vg/data_lv. Create a mount directory, such as /data, and mount the LV: mkdir /data and mount /dev/storage_vg/data_lv /data. Verify the mount with df -h:

[root@server ~]# mkfs -t ext4 /dev/storage_vg/data_lv
mke2fs 1.45.6 (20-Mar-2020)
Creating filesystem with 131072000 4k blocks and 32768000 inodes
Filesystem UUID: 98765432-fedc-ba09-8765-4321fedcba09
Superblock backups stored on blocks:
        32768, 98304, 163840, 229376, 294912, 819200, 884736, 1605632

Writing inode tables: done
Creating journal (262144 blocks): done
Writing superblocks and filesystem accounting information: done

[root@server ~]# mkdir /data
[root@server ~]# mount /dev/storage_vg/data_lv /data
[root@server ~]# df -h
Filesystem                       Size  Used Avail Use% Mounted on
/dev/sda1                         50G  2.0G   45G   5% /
tmpfs                            4.0G     0  4.0G   0% /dev/shm
/dev/mapper/storage_vg-data_lv   493G   70M  467G   1% /data

To enable automatic mounting at boot, edit /etc/fstab. Add an entry like:

/dev/storage_vg/data_lv    /data    ext4    defaults    1 2

Test the fstab configuration by unmounting and remounting: umount /data followed by mount -a. Check with df -h to ensure the mount is restored.

Key commands summarized:

# fdisk /dev/sdb
# pvcreate /dev/sdb1
# vgcreate storage_vg /dev/sdb1
# lvcreate -l 128000 -n data_lv storage_vg
# mkfs -t ext4 /dev/storage_vg/data_lv
# mkdir /data
# mount /dev/storage_vg/data_lv /data