I am looking to get a dedicated linux server for a site I will be running. I am new to dedicated servers and Linux. Since media will be added on a regular basis I am sure at some point I will need to add additional disk drives depending on when I start needing the extra space of course.

It seems a lot of hosting providers will offer say 500gb disk space. Im sure it is pretty easy to contact them and add lets say another 500gb or 1gb disk drive to my hosting package. How does this work with the file directory structure that is already in place?

Lets say the site has been coded to automatically save and read uploaded media in the /media directory and I am running low on server space. I would like to add more drives but not have to create any new partitions, folders or change code which would then affect existing media.

So is this possible and how would one go about doing this? What server options should I be looking for..(raid etc.)?

Again I am new to this and any info would be appreciated.

Thanks.

Here is my humble opinion on purchasing dedicated servers;

I always purchase 2+X hard drives on the initial purchase page:
* 2x73GB 10,000RPM or whichever drive with a small size and request from the datacenter guys to build a RAID 1 on these 2 disks and install the system on it
* X additional drives are for my applications.

After the server gets ready I build a RAID-(X) on the additional drives and create 1 LVM VG on this RAID device and expand it when needed.

This way I am sure there will be 0-downtime in case of a system disk failure and no-data loss in case of any disk failures.

I hope this piece of advice comes handy.

Thanks for the info barghota. Will look into that way of doing it a bit more then.

I would keep figuring.

With a dedicated server, /var would need to be big enough to keep your logs. /home, or wherever your data is, can grow exponentially. /tmp also needs some size. The rest of the system stays basically the same size no matter what software you put on.

I would second the raid idea, and consider regular backups. How are they going to be done?

thanks barghota. 10,000RPM interesting