Hard drives-Partitioning for performance-Web server
 

Hello-

I am building a new server that will be used in a LAMP webserver configuration.

I have 6 drives total.
All Ultra320
All on the same channel. :/

2x 36 GB (15K rpm) I will have in raid 1.
4x 72 GB (10K rpm) I will have in a raid 5.

OS is RHEL 4.


Questions is, what is the best way to partition this for performance?
/boot and swap on sda?
/ on sdb?
Just put /var and /home on sdb?

Thanks in advance folks!

A lot of people do not know that RAID-1 (mirroring) is better for a web server. Also RAID-1 is better for serving an OS and a file server.

I suggest putting four 72 GB hard drives in RAID-1 to minimize the time to find four files. Set this for the web server files. Then for your two 36 GB hard drives, put them in RAID-1 as well. Use the 36 GB hard drive for the OS.

[36 GB RAID-1 array]
16MB-128MB /boot
1GB swap
2GB /var/log
1 GB or more /var/mysql
4 GB /
all unused space /home

[72 GB RAID-1 array]
all /var/www

I know I suggest a different RAID setup than yours but RAID-5 is better for in a NAS backup or on a 1 gigabit network. I suggest using either EXT3 with b-tree or XFS.

Thanks for the reply Electro. RAID 1 only uses two drives, you wouldn't use the other two drives at all? I will be using more then the 72 GB the 2nd array will provide. What of them?

Thanks!

You can place four drives in RAID-1, but it is up to the software if it can accept four queues. You can try set up multiple RAID-1 arrays and then add them to either LVM2 or EVMS, but the system will not be able to access more than one file. You can setup two LVM2 or EVMS and put them in a RAID-1 array. Two files can be read at once and the capacity can grow when needed. With any LVM2 or EVMS setups, it will try to do RAID-0 when possible. If the server is going to have a 50/50 read and write queues, two RAID-5 hardware arrays and Linux software RAID set in RAID-1. This will provide multiple write and read queues. Also it has higher reduntancy rating than RAID-5.

I never seen a site that is taking up more than 72 GB. If you are setting up a file download site, than maybe. I think this site is taking up a few gigabytes.