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Our InternetServer has two SCSI hard drives. They are both roughly 18 gigs, but are not the same model or speed. Details at ServerHardware.

Mirroring

I (BenScott) think we should mirror the two disks (RAID level 1). There is no service contract or tech support, physical access is limited, and we have limited manpower and no budget. A disk failure could knock us offline for weeks. At the same time, our current disk usage is small.

While I always prefer hardware RAID for the boot drive, the server does not have a controller, and we have no money to buy one. So, that means software RAID, which, as far as I know, does work pretty well on Linux. However I haven't done one of these in a long time, and never with GRUB. Do others have recent experience?

-- BenScott - 10 Feb 2006

Software RAID on linux is now faster and has always been more servicable than hardware RAID. Most RH-based installers handle install to RAID just fine, given enough mouse clicks - converting after the fact is a big exercise so let's not do that. Sample GRUB:

title Fedora Core (2.6.15-1.1831_FC4)
        root (hd0,0)
        kernel /vmlinuz-2.6.15-1.1831_FC4 ro root=/dev/md1
        initrd /initrd-2.6.15-1.1831_FC4.img

-- BillMcGonigle - 11 Feb 2006

I second the SW RAID 1 suggestion, and have used SW RAID extensively including for boot. grub can deal with booting from either disk, though you do have to install it twice (once on each MBR.) Are there details on space available in the machine? (I'm assuming there's not much left in a 1U...) - If there's room, I can volunteer an 80 GB IDE for backups/bulk storage etc. Note that both the RAID personality and the IDE controller driver must be compiled into the kernel for this.

-- DrewVanZandt - 10 Feb 2006

The only physical space not consumed is around the two open PCI slots. The ServerHardware page has been updated with pix, more details, and OEM docs. -- BenScott - 16 Feb 2006

LVM

I'm learning towards using LVM to create containers for each partition. That gives us the flexibility to re-organize our partitions and such later on. Given that our plans for the future are very much up in the air, that is a real benefit. Anyone have any objections or suggestions with LVM? -- BenScott - 10 Feb 2006

You can't boot from LVM and LVM usually implies you'll be adding disks. Since the server is maxed out on disks, this is just an extra layer of complexity. If we're going to just increase the disk size in one of the two slots it's easy enough to copy the data from the 18GB disk to whatever we wind up with, then re-sync the mirrors. I'm a fan of LVM but where it's appropriate. -- BillMcGonigle - 11 Feb 2006

The boot problem is easily solved with a small /boot partition protected by plain RAID (md). As for why LVM, as I said, this gives us flexibility in our partition layout. Say we make /var/log too small and need to make it bigger, or /home too big or small, or whatever. LVM makes it trivial to change, with minimal downtime. Without LVM, you have to take the filesystems offline and possibly spend forever doing a risky shift-in-place operation. While LVM does mean some added complexity, as you pointed out for mirroring, it's pretty well automated in most distros. Other then complexity (which I feel is a valid point, just perhaps not an overriding one), are there objections to LVM? -- BenScott - 16 Feb 2006

Partition and directory layout

This topic tends to invite holy wars. That's usually a sign that the topic lacks objective, one-size-fits-all criteria. Please keep that in mind as we all put forth our preferences and opinions. -- BenScott - 10 Feb 2006

Here's the first "holy salvo"... Put everything (except swap) in one partition. Why? There's no good reason not too (unless we're going to use dump/restore to tapes). -- BruceDawson - 10 Feb 2006

  • I mostly agree - it might be worth considering a separate /boot partition if we're going to have terminal server access to this machine and the / filesystem becomes corrupted, we at least stand a chance of fsck'ing it back to life remotely. We certainly shouldn't try to predict usage of /home vs /usr/local vs /opt vs /var as the specs are too loosely defined. -- BillMcGonigle - 11 Feb 2006
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Topic revision: r8 - 2006-02-15 - BenScott
 

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