dnk wrote:
Hi there,
I am currently setting up a server that will house my backups (simply using rsync).
This system has 4 X 500 gb drives and I am looking to raid for max drive space and data safety. Performance is not so much a concern.
My experience with software raids in nil, so some of these may seem like pretty dumb questions.
I was thinking a raid 1 is probably sufficient.
Would it be best to raid 1 two drives each and LVM them together?
The configuration you want is a hybrid of RAID1 and RAID5. The RAID1 is because GRUB doesn't grok RAID5, but is OK with just your /boot partition in RAID1.
Make a RAID1 for your /boot partition as follows:
/dev/md0 - /dev/sda1, /dev/sdb1, /dev/sdc1 (S), /dev/sdd1 (S) (100 Mbytes)
Make a RAID5 as follows for a LVM partition using the rest of your available space as follows (just under 1500 Mbytes):
/dev/md1 - /dev/sda2, /dev/sdb2, /dev/sdc2, /dev/sdd2
Create a LVM partition on /dev/md1 and carve out your / and swap partitions from it.
My next question would be about how to do this as I have never done a linux software raid.