Technical requirements

You can continue the practice using the virtual machine (VM) created at the beginning of this book in Chapter 1, Getting RHEL Up and Running. Any additional packages required for this chapter will be indicated alongside the text. You will also need additional disks for partitioning (MBR and GPT).

Let’s start with a definition

A partition is a logical division of a storage device, and it’s used to logically separate the available storage into smaller pieces.

Now, let’s move on to learning a bit about the origins of storage to better understand it.

A bit of history

Storage is also related to a system’s ability to use it, so let’s explain a bit about the history of personal computers (PCs), the software that allows them to boot (Basic Input/Output System or BIOS), and how that influenced storage administration.

It might sound slightly strange, but initial storage needs were just a small amount of kilobytes (KB...