[CentOS] Large disk support

Fri Dec 1 23:37:01 UTC 2006
Gary Richardson <gary.richardson at gmail.com>

It looks like you already have a solution, but you could always create two
arrays, mirroring the 500GB drives. Then, create / and /boot partitions from
the 500GB mirror and put the rest of the 500GB + the remaining space in the
array into an LVM and carve it up however you see fit. I suppose that would
could work if you weren't using a 3ware card..

On 11/28/06, Kevan Benson <kbenson at a-1networks.com> wrote:
>
> On Tuesday 28 November 2006 13:07, chrism at imntv.com wrote:
> > Kevan Benson wrote:
> > > I have a 3.5 TB RAID 5 Array through a 3ware 9590SE 8 port card, and
> am
> > > running into what seems like quite a lot of problems trying to get the
> > > system installed correctly.  The system is a running dual Opterons
> with 2
> > > GB of RAM, and I'm attempting to install through the x86_64 ServerCD.
> > >
> > > First, grub refuses to install on the disk, as it's too large.  I can
> get
> > > around this though by booting Fedora Core 6 in rescue mode and running
> > > grub, as it can deal with the disk size correctly.  This might only be
> > > working when I attempt installs that don't utilize as much of the
> array
> > > as possible though (100 MB /boot, 2GB swap, 10Gb /, the rest left
> > > unallocated).
> > >
> > > Secondly, there seems to be a problem using msdos disk labels with
> large
> > > partitions, and I can't seem to find any solutions to this in the
> manuals
> > > or on the net.  GPT labels are offered as a solution to this but only
> for
> > > Itanium systems.
> > >
> > > Am I missing some obvious solution to this?  Are there some best
> > > practices for dealing with large disks anyone can share that may save
> me
> > > problems now or later?  I'm open to suggestions, as all I've
> encountered
> > > so far are problems.
> >
> > On two different systems with hardware similar to yours, I ended up
> > using 2 different solutions.  :)  On one, I simply replaced 2 of the
> > 750gig 'cudas in an 8 disk array with 160gig drives and then created a
> > RAID1 on those 2 drives for the OS.  After the OS was installed, I then
> > used parted to create the gpt label on the large array and created the
> > filesystem on it.
> >
> > On another system, I really needed the ports on the 3ware for the array
> > so I installed a pair of 160gig drives using a cheapo dual port SATA
> > card and used software RAID 1 on those two drives for the OS install.
> > After the system was installed, I then used parted to create the GPT
> > label on the large array and created the filesystem on it.
> >
> > If you go back through the list archives a bit, you'll see a bunch of
> > very useful information from a couple of months ago where a number of
> > people offered excellent tuning suggestions.  If you get stuck, shoot me
> > some email off list and I'll see if I can give you a hand.
>
> Thanks for all the suggestions, and to Joshua for mentioning 3ware's
> carving,
> which I wasn't aware of before this.
>
> Carving with LVM to append portions into a large LV seems to be the
> solution
> I'm leaning towards, as it seems to be the easiest to implement "out of
> the
> box" and I expect it will cause the least issues in the long run as
> there's
> no room in the chassis for more drives (it also has a tape drive) and
> dedicating one or two 500 GB drives to an install array seems wasteful.
>
> --
> - Kevan Benson
> - A-1 Networks
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