Greetings everyone,

Although I have been "playing" with several versions of Linux on occasion for some time, I am now on a serious project and beginning to learn how little I know.

I am constructing an Ubuntu 9.10 server (64bit) with the goal of loading Oracle's Essbase OLAP as the key component. The server has 2 1-TB drives I wish to set up in a RAID1 schema. As I dig into this I find very little in terms of "best practice" for partitioning the two drives. Should I invoke multiple partitions on these two drives? Use LVM also? If the main goal is for this to be a "departmental class" server, i.e., 10 - 25 users that are only using this server for OLAP models and activity, what would be the suggested disk configuration?

This is a "pseudo" server class machine, i.e., it is an ASUS M4A79 Deluxe Motherboard - AMD 790FX, Socket AM3 with AMD Phenom II X4 955 Black Edition Quad Core Processor, 2 - WD Caviar Green 1TB 32MB/SATA-3G and 4 GB RAM - so that should be sufficient for the type of use intended.

Your suggestions / guidance is deeply appreciated.

Best Regards
GLBeach

What is the required uptime? Example 24x7x365@99% (!)

Typically this type of box will not need 24X7 activity for the full business month but will need 24 hour availability during the monthly closing cycle - say 10 days a month.