logical device (LDEV)

An individual logical data volume (on multiple drives in a RAID configuration) in the storage system. An LDEV may or may not contain any data and may or may not be defined to any hosts. Each LDEV has a unique identifier or "address" within the storage system composed of the logical disk controller (LDKC) number, control unit (CU) number, and LDEV number. The LDEV IDs within a storage system do not change.An LDEV formatted for use by mainframe hosts is called a logical volume image (LVI). An LDEV formatted for use by open-system hosts is called a logical unit (LU).