Of course the trade off of a single giant volume for everything is that if you end up with some process that starts eating up all of your disk then you're pretty much stuck. Syslog is one example. Also if you get a dirty partition that needs a fsck then the larger it is the longer time for recovery. _____ From: tclug-list-bounces at mn-linux.org [mailto:tclug-list-bounces at mn-linux.org] On Behalf Of Chris Barber Sent: Friday, May 30, 2008 2:11 PM To: Robert De Mars; tclug-list at mn-linux.org Subject: Re: [tclug-list] OT - Hardware Advice What you would do is create a new logical array that included all 6 disks. Then it asks what RAID level you want. Almost every RAID controller I've seen allows you to pick a valid RAID level for the number of drives you selected. In the case of 6 drives, you commonly should be able to do RAID 0, 1, 1+0, 5, 6. If you don't see RAID 1+0 in the list, make sure your controller can even do RAID 1+0. Once you have a single large logical drive, go ahead and install the OS on it and as I recommended in my previous email, allocate 2-4GB to swap area and the rest to your OS and data files. Some people like creating a separate partition for data, and that's cool, but I've run into issues with running out of disk space one of the partitions. When you run out of space, pretty much your only choice is to format and re-install. I suppose you could add more drives and expand the array, then figure out how to grow the file system, but expanding a RAID array takes forever and a day. And after you've reinstalled your OS a couple times, fancy partitioning schemes can be annoying to setup again. -Chris Robert De Mars wrote: Chris Barber writes: Nope, use all 6 disks in the RAID 1+0. That way you get more throughput. I like things easy, so I would just create a root partition that eats up almost all of the space, then a second small (2GB) swap area. That way you don't have to worry about running out of disk space if you make a particular partition too small. -Chris Forgive me for asking so many questions, but I am still a virgin to RAID, and this is going to be my first RAID setup. OK, My new server is going to have 6 drives. I am going to go with RAID10. For the first part (raid 1), do I want to make two or three sets. For Example, do I want to make drive 1+2, 3+4, 5+6 RAID 1, or can I do 1+2+3 & 4+5+6 as RAID 1. What do you think is best. Then for the second part (raid 0), I guess that depends on how the raid 1 was setup. Your thoughts are greatly appreciated! Robert De Mars Robert De Mars wrote: Chris Barber writes: I use RAID 1+0 for database servers. Thanks to everyone who has responded to my post. I like the RAID 1+0 idea. I was originally planning on running the OS, and database separate from each other. How should I proceed with the install. Would it be best to run the OS as RAID 1 (2 disks) as originally planned, and run the database on RAID 1+0 (4 disks)? Or, should I run the whole thing (OS & Database) on one huge RAID 1+0? Thanks, Robert De Mars http://b-o-b.homelinux.com _______________________________________________ TCLUG Mailing List - Minneapolis/St. Paul, Minnesota tclug-list at mn-linux.org http://mailman.mn-linux.org/mailman/listinfo/tclug-list Robert De Mars http://b-o-b.homelinux.com _______________________________________________ TCLUG Mailing List - Minneapolis/St. Paul, Minnesota tclug-list at mn-linux.org http://mailman.mn-linux.org/mailman/listinfo/tclug-list -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://mailman.mn-linux.org/pipermail/tclug-list/attachments/20080530/e119856b/attachment-0001.htm