Hi all,
Its a while since I posted to these forums, but I have been an active reader! I am now a Network Manager at a different company and can try and get the company to convert some (if not all) of their systems away from M$
... with a little help from you guys
Anyway,
My system:
Compaq Proliant 6000
Quad 400MHz Pentiums CPUs
2Gb RAM
Compaq Array Controller 3500 (i think)
Single 9.1Gb SCSI 10,000rpm disk
SUSE 9.2 (kernel 2.6.8-24-smp)
Project:
Install a stable and resilient Linux installation to use as a platform to host VMware (and a few hosts - Linux and Windows). Its going to be a monitoring server / SNORT / IDS / Firewall etc.etc.
What I have done so far:
Phase 1:
I have (finally) successfully installed SUSE 9.2 onto the box using most of the defaults. I have added a couple of NIC cards to allow more functionality in VMware.
# Output from fdisk –l
Disk /dev/ida/c0d0: 18.1 GB, 18194841600 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 2212 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes
Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/ida/c0d0p1 1 129 1036161 82 Linux swap / Solaris
/dev/ida/c0d0p2 130 1105 7839720 83 Linux
# Output from fstab
/dev/ida/c0d0p2 / reiserfs acl,user_xattr 1 1
/dev/ida/c0d0p1 swap swap pri=42 0 0
devpts /dev/pts devpts mode=0620,gid=5 0 0
proc /proc proc defaults 0 0
usbfs /proc/bus/usb usbfs noauto 0 0
sysfs /sys sysfs noauto 0 0
/dev/cdrom /media/cdrom subfs fs=cdfss,ro,procuid,nosuid,nodev,exec,iocharset=utf8 0 0
/dev/fd0 /media/floppy subfs fs=floppyfss,procuid,nodev,nosuid,sync 0 0
Phase 2:
I added a second 9.1Gb SCSI disk, ran the Compaq Smartstart Array configuration, extended the array and migrated the array to RAID 1+0 (mirror).
Rebooted and checked that SUSE was still working.
Phase 3:
I added a third 9.1Gb SCSI disk, ran the Compaq Smartstart Array configuration again, extended the array and migrated the array to RAID 5.
Rebooted and checked that SUSE was still working.
At this point I also checked the disk space and found it to still be 9.1Gb. After migrating to RAID 5 it should be 18.2Gb. However when I run YAST ~ System ~ Partitioner the extra space is recognised:
Device Size Type Mount Start End
/dev/ida/c0d0 16.9Gb SMART Array 0/0 0 4354
/dev/ida/c0d0p1 1012 Mb Linux swap swap 0 253
/dev/ida/c0d0p2 7.4Gb Linux native / 254 2174
Note: the 16.9Gb
Question/Problem:
I would like to use this extra space, and possibly add additional disks at a later date.
Solution:
1. Erase everything, and setup the partitions with the full 16.9Gb used (don’t really want to go down this route)
2. Create extended partition and mount the drive into a folder on the existing / (I don’t think this is going to use the resilience of the Compaq Raid Array)
3. Extend the initial 9.1Gb to cover the 3x 9.1Gb disks (i.e. use the RAID array as it should be. If one drive fails, the server continues. You replace the faulty drive, and the Array rebuilds the data from the other functioning drives aka RAID 5)
I have fiddled with the SUSE partitioner and LVM and RAID partitions (am I right in saying that creating a RAID partition here is a ‘software’ RAID solution?).
I ‘think’ I need to go down the route of using LVM, but am unsure if:
a) this is the correct way of doing what I want to do
b) will allow me to expand the array later if I add another disk
c) allow me to keep the existing installation and ‘migrate’ it to a LVM
Over to the experts.
Joadoor
PS. Sorry for the long post.