>>> What advantages, if any, would lvm have over this set up? >> >> How about flexible filesystem resizing? If you did it the way I >> suggested: 512MB /boot, 512MB /tmp, you have like 960GB of space to >> carve anyway you like. You also get lvm snapshots which you won't get >> with raid seeing that this is supposed to be a backup server too. > > Yea, I think for these reasons I will use lvm. I have set up a system > as follows: > > /boot raid 1 200mb 4 drives no spares (I guess this makes 4 copies of > the data?) You have four disks which will be paired into two pairs. If one pair goes, everything goes. Might as well use one pair for /boot and the other for /tmp. > 2 250mb raid1 arrays over the 4 drives (2 drives each ) for swap You can use a logical volume for swap. This is really not necessary. > rest of space in 2 raid 1 arrays > lvm on top of the 2 raid1 arrays > / 10gb on lvm > /data 50gb on lvm > /backup 250gb on lvm > > rest of space left free to allow for resizing and adding of partitions > with lvm and snap shots. > > I will pull out a drive tommorow and see how resilient this is. Does > this sound like a good solution? Actually, installing Open Solaris (nexenta distro -> www.gnusolaris.org) and using zfs would be much better and less of an administrative headache :D. /me runs for cover.