[CentOS] Suggestions for partition

[Feizhou]

Alfred von Campe wrote:
> The recent thread on Anaconda and RAID10 made me start to think about 
> how to partition a server I'm about to set up.  I have two 146GB SCSI 
> drives on an IBM x3550.  It will be used as a build system.  As such, 
> there is no critical data on these systems, as the source code will be 
> checked out of our source control system, and the build results are 
> copied to another system.  I usually build my systems with Kickstart, so 
> if a disk dies, I can rebuild it quickly.

I used kickstart, pxe, tftp and dhcp to manage a cluster of mail 
servers. Two disk 1U boxes too. /, swap, /var (logging was to a central 
log host).

> 
> Given all that, how would you partition these disks?  I keep going back 
> and forth between various options (HW RAID, SW RAID, LVM, etc.).  I 
> guess speed is more important to me than redundancy.  I'm tempted to 
> install the OS on one drive and use the entire second drive for data.  
> This way I can rebuild or upgrade the OS without touching the data.  But 
> that will waste a lot of disk space, as the OS does not need 146GB.

A scsi raid controller with write cache? Hardware raid definitely. 
Especially if the driver supports the write cache.

> 
> The only thing I'm pretty sure of is to put 2GB of swap on each drive, 
> but after that everything is still in the air.  I am looking for any and 
> all suggestions from the collective wisdom and experience of this list.

swap should go on a raid1 device whether partition or swap file.