# SLE12 Partitioning guideline

**URL:** <https://forums.suse.com/t/sle12-partitioning-guideline/26795>\
**Category:** SLES Configure-Administer\
**Created:** [March 10, 2015, 9:10pm UTC](https://forums.suse.com/t/sle12-partitioning-guideline/26795 "2015-03-10T21:10:12Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 3\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![lnhaig](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/d9b06d/32.png) [@lnhaig](https://forums.suse.com/u/lnhaig)\
**Post date:** [March 10, 2015, 9:10pm UTC](https://forums.suse.com/t/sle12-partitioning-guideline/26795/1 "2015-03-10T21:10:12Z")

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Hi All,

We normally build our templates in SLES11 on LVM with separate partitions for some mountpoints e.g.

/  
/var  
/tmp  
/home  
etc…

This allows us to dynamically grow or shrink disk space as needed on the different mountpoints.  
The templates are on VMware and so we can extend disks on the fly and increase space without downtime.

With SLE12 I would like to do the same thing but also be able to utilise the BTRFS snapshot functionality

How do I make this a realty?

Do I create an LVM based solution as in the past and then just create BTRFS filesystems for each mountpoint as we did in the past?  
or do we create subvolumes?

I would appreciate some advice

Thanks

Lance

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**Author:** ![ab1](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/d2c977/32.png) [@ab1](https://forums.suse.com/u/ab1)\
**Post date:** [March 11, 2015, 9:20am UTC](https://forums.suse.com/t/sle12-partitioning-guideline/26795/2 "2015-03-11T09:20:24Z")

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From what I can tell with subvolumes (having them defined in openSUSE  
systems of mine for a few years now) there is nothing in them which  
pertains to disk size… they’re there to control whether or not you have  
snapshots or other btrfs-specific features enabled for one part of the  
filesystem or another.

As a result, just do things as you always have within LVM, and then use  
subvolumes to control things like whether or not you want to snapshot  
things like /var/tmp instead of /var, or /tmp instead of /, or whatever.

–  
Good luck.

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**Author:** ![lnhaig](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/d9b06d/32.png) [@lnhaig](https://forums.suse.com/u/lnhaig)\
**Post date:** [March 11, 2015, 10:23am UTC](https://forums.suse.com/t/sle12-partitioning-guideline/26795/3 "2015-03-11T10:23:25Z")

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Thank you.

I was thinking that just to create volumes as normal and use btrfs on each volume so we get snapper goodness 🙂

Regards

Lance