RHEL 6.4 64bit Desktop Mutiple Hard Drive configuration... Best Practices???
Hi all,
I am loading two machines with RHEL 6.4 64bit. They will be loaded as Desktops. Each will have 1 250GB SSD drive and 3 2TB SATA drives. The direction I have is to load the OS on the SSD with the /home and /usr folder on the SATA drives configured as one 6TB drive. These are one off machines to be dedicated for MATLAB data crunching. Can I get some best practices here for partitioning/mounting these drives? |
So i can get the 2TB drives in a RAID 0 configuration, but have no idea where to mount the array and no idea how to do a custom layout for the partitioning of the SSD drive.
We want the /home and the /usr folders to be on the 6TB drive. How do I do a custom partion layout to get this accomplished along with getting the OS loade on the SSD drive?? |
You can configure that during or after install.
https://access.redhat.com/site/docum...ion/index.html https://access.redhat.com/site/docum...ide/index.html Basically mount ssd as / Usr as /usr home as /home Etc... Essentially you will have to create a volume group and then add the mount points you want as individual logical volumes. I suggest you do it during install using lvm since lvm will allow you to add more volume groups change sizes etc later. |
are you doing hardware RAID or are you doing software FRAID (fake RAID)
dont bother with FRAID it is slower and will/can lead to issues down the road. If you can not hardware RAID them properly then even LVM is a sketchy solution as if 1 drive fails you lose EVERYTHING in the LVM, zero chance of recovery. how vital is the retention of the data, do you have a means of backing said data up? If you are going to run FRAID, then put that ontop of a LVM so you can span then you can expand or contract as needed over time. when installing the OS you can perform those tasks via Anaconda or drop down to the CLI at the partition section and perform fdisk and other tools on the drives. Again this is were real hardware RAID comes into play. with real hardware RAID you interupt the boot sequence during the RAID card (depends on the card ctrl+e sometimes) and configure the drives there and setup the RAID 0 you are after before you start to install. you will either have to have a RAID controller that RHEL already has drivers for or you will have to have some form of media to install the drivers when prompted by Anaconda. after that again it is just follow the clicks on the screen and setup your LVM for /home and /usr. fyi you might want to put /swap there too. |
I ended up doing a HW RAID 0. The machines I am working with had that built in. The data on the 6TB RAID 0 is disposable, so no problems there.
Here is the first draft at my first custom config: SSD has / across the entire disk No swap file as we have 60GB of ram in this machine. HW RAID 0 6TB /home 5.8TB /tmp 1GB /var 1GB Reasoning behind this config is that the OS & SW (MATLAB & Synergy) will be loaded on the SSD drive for speed. /var, /tmp on the TB drive due to /var/log file always graowing and slowing the SSD down if placed there. /tmp on the TB drive as I have read that the /tmp file tends to shorten the life of the SSD drives and /home on the TB as the data generated by MATLAB is huge but disposable. Let me know. My main concern is the size I chose for /var and /tmp. After reading this link http://www.tldp.org/LDP/intro-linux/...ect_03_01.html it mentioned the entire size of / was 100-500MB, so I guessed that 1GB should suffice for /var and /tmp. Comments? Concersns? Thanks to all members for your support! |
1 gb for temp may be ok. I don't know about how matlab generates in tmp. I think tmp is ok. Since you say the data is not that important, you should be ok with var being 1 gb. Monitor it. I keep logs for a long time. 1.5 years. My current system is not even that old and already generated about 700mb worth of logs. But it also acts as a log server.
Hopefully you got lvm set up.and that is where the beauty is. If any of those put you in a pinch, you can just resize. 1gb is good for the initial stages. Monitor over the next few months to see how fast it grows and adjust accordingly. Remember the lv commands when the time comes. But let's cross fingers it doesn't. |
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The beauty of these first one off machines is that I can reload to reconfigure quickly. There is no data to backup etc. Just asking if by using LVM at this point am I starting to put the cart out in front of the horse... |
Lvm works great, but as you said. I am also new to lvm in that respect. I use to create partions as if they were on a basic disk and stop there. Started playing with them about a year ago and now am hooked.
Expanding them if you have space available. Easy peasy. Reducing can be a nightmare. Works and then does work after reboot. Of course that happened with me not reading up, just jumping in. But i did have a virtual machine set up specially for that. Your choice is sound, that is what is best for you at the moment according to your needs. Nothing wrong in that, but please do check them out if you have a test ground and time. |
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