Need recommendation for partitioning scheme
 

Hey guys, I'll try to not ramble but want you to know what I'm dealing with. I need a recommendation for how to partition a home server I have. It's already up and running for a while now, it's my home / remote plex server and it's a backup location for my machines, phones and some of the families computers as well. The plan was to also get either owncloud or nextcloud in it and also replace dropbox myself. He's the problem

I'm no pro or an admin, but I'm good enough for simple stuff like what it does. I'm currently using the (apparently outdated) partitioning scheme of

/boot
/swap
/
/home

I've always stuck to that with all my machines over the years but it seems like owncloud wants to be based in / which I guess makes sense, but mines not that big sooooooo I was going to repartition but want to think ahead, so would LVM be a better idea for the flexibility of a possible (hopefully not) resize later? Right now I've got 2 4TB's in a RAID1 if it makes a difference. I was going to just do a single part but would like to have the ability to reinstall the OS if needed without loosing my data so kinda stumped. Running Debian stable if it matters.

Just curious what others would do for those purposes.

Difinitely go with lvm and raid.

I am not too familiar with cloud solutions but in my case the following works really well for me.

/
/var
/var/log
/var/www
/samba/shares
/home
/boot
/kvm/iso-storage
/kvm/vm-images

Those are the typical ones I use depending on the server which is used but always a variation of those. I do also have software defined raid running on top of LVM and so far have not really had any issues.

If i use the machine as a typical day to day desktop, i do not bother with partitions and just click through the defaults. LVM is by default used on most distros so later changing them around should in theory not be much of an issue.

Nothing wrong with that layout - you can always bust out directories to separate partitions/lvs later in need.
Yes, LVM is a good option - but you can't get there from here without pain. Especially if you want to move the root and/or /boot.

And don't forget backups. Always. RAID is not a substitute for backups.

Hard to recommend with so little info. We don't know the layout of your disks (which are RAIDed, what space is allocated, how much unallocated) nor what you want the final layout to be. What's to be RAID, what isn't - if not do you want to use both disks for owncloud ?. That almost demands LVM - in which case maybe let it handle the RAID (not sure if stable will be at the correct version for that, Fedora has had it for ages).

Thanks guys, right now it's 2 4TB's in a RAID1 with 100% of it allocated with the listed partitions. My idea was just basically recreate that more or less, by putting 100% of those 2 drives in the RAID1, creating the VG and within that more or less create the same logicals but this time leave a couple hundred gigs off the end for wiggle room asuming at some point either / or /home may need a stretch.

Also, I know how loaded this question is, but I mean it lightly, It's running Debian stable now which has been great to me but you (obviously opinion) think I'd be better off with CentOS seeing as what it really is? I know it sets up RAID much better than Debian does and with it always being behind in versions of software I always wonder if I'd be better off. I had it installed originally but the differences in being RPM based screwed with me. I'll learn anything was just lazy at the time, too many years on DEB based stuff. But want to think long term.

Not much point changing if you won't be comfortable. You can load LVM on top of mdadm RAID - people have been doing it for decades.
I never totally allocate drives (even without LVM), but LVM adds significant flexibility. If you stay away from XFS you can even reduce a lv to allow the space to be added to another - easily. Let's see current "lsblk" output.

Depends on how it was installed.
Most go to /var/www/owncloud via Debian package managers that I've seen.
Manually, could be anywhere, literally.

Well. I would certainly not recommend leaving debian for centos. I do use centos mainly but before that debian was my choice and always went back to it in the end. Using debian is a sound option and really would not affect what you are trying to achieve apart from it being done slightly differently.

As mentioned above... the owncloud rootor / would be relative to where it is installed, not your actual root mount point for your system. I should have pointed that out.