Hey all,
My old server consists of a /root + swap part on a 40gb ide drive and a 6 hdd raid5 array.

My new server will consist of
3x750gb Sata Raid5
2x320gb Sata Raid1
Promise SATA300TX4 raid controller (+ onboard raid)
Asus M2n

Anyhoo im confused slightly about LVM's. ATM im fiddling with debain inside a virtual PC and i can set it up but im finding it hard to see the benefits.

So if someone could in a nutshell explain to me why i want LVM that would be great. Most the webpages i have seen have been quite vague.

Anyway this is my proposed setup
Sda and sdb are the 320gb drives, cde are 750's
/dev/sda1 319gb in size, raid partition
/dev/sda2 100mb in size, raid partition
/dev/sda3 900mb in size, swap partition
/dev/sdb1 319gb in size, raid partition
/dev/sdb2 100mb in size, raid partition
/dev/sdb3 900mb in size, swap partition

MD0 consists of /dev/sda1 /dev/sdb1 and contains LVM group vgosraid
MD1 consists of /dev/sda2 /dev/sdb2 and contains the /boot partition (AFAIK Bootloaders dont understand LVM so that will mean i need a sep part)

In the group vgosraid i will have the following lvm's
15gb /
200gb /home

Actually i kind of can understand the advantage of LVM's now, as i can dynamically expand the partitions like /home /usr e.t.c. Would i want to have seperate lvm's for /usr e.t.c. or should i follow KISS and just use a / and a /home as its just for a basic fileserver with a torrent client. If i dont make it complicated i wont need to expand things as often

the other 3 disks will be full raid partitions, in a raid5 array.

will contain a lvm group with 3 devices. one for Music, One For Downloads and One for Videos.

So in that situation when a device needs more space i can just expand it?

A few final Questions
Do i have to worry about Phys Extents?
What should i set the chunksise for the array if most files are >200mb but many files will also be <10mb
Will that controller work with smartd? my other IDE controllers dont let my current server grab smart information.
Any other things i need to be specific about?
Thanks

This may help, from a great book;
http://books.google.com/books?id=3Ig...pVCX6qkjjNZIug

Can you give a simpler link to the material? -- the one you posted has frames & crashed an entire multi-window instance of Konqueror for me.

No, but here is the book, you may find an ebook somewhere or you can buy it.
http://books.google.com/books?id=3Ig...+software+raid
You can get 40% off here;
http://www.linuxreality.com/
sorry I can't help more ...

Hey all,
Thanks for the fs tips, now i just need some clarification on what i should do with hdd's
Atm my array has 6x200gb disks and the backup is two 500gb disks

Plan 1: 500g's

Raid5 4x500gb drives, size expanded to 1.5TB, backup drives now equals 1.4TB
Reach 1.4TB space, a 750gb drive is purchased and put into backup serv giving 2.15TB
Reach 1.5TB space, another 500gb drive is purchased
Reach 2TB space, the 5 500gb drives are put into the backup server, 3x750gb drives are purchased.
From 4x750gb drives,2.25TB is yielded, total backup space = 2.5TB + .6 TB (3 200gb drives needed only)
Reach 2.25TB add a 750GB disk for 3TB
Reach 3TB, Buy 5x1TB drives giving 4TB, backup server has 2.5 + 3.75
Reach 4TB, Buy 5x 1.25TB drives, TB disks go into backup giving 5TB + 3.75 + 2.5
Reach 5TB e.t.c.

Plan Two:
Buy 3x750's for array, backup consists of 2x500 + 7x200
Buy a 750 for array giving 2.25TB
Buy a 750 for ayyay giving 3TB, buy a 1TB for backup
then simmilar approach as before.

I think ill go for plan one as its cheaper for the first step. I wont loose my backup because i will create the array as 2 disks and a missing, then copy the backup to the array, then add the drives and expand the array.

One question, The new 500's i am buying will be sata, if the other ones are pata will that be ok?