[CentOS] Re: RAID, LVM, extra disks...

Thu Nov 29 18:16:49 UTC 2007
Ugo Bellavance <ugob at lubik.ca>

Ross S. W. Walker wrote:
> 
> What are you trying to accomplish storage wise?
> 
> Is this for commerical or personal use?

Commercial, but non-critical use.

> If for personal use, then it isn't as critical how it is setup,
> but if this is for commercial use then you need to target your
> storage to your application.

Nothing really very IO demanding.  Running an OpenVZ server with many 
Virtual machines on it, but load is very low.

> 
> If you want this to be reconfigured on the fly without ever
> rebooting then you may find your options limited on which
> RAID levels you can choose.
> 
> Typically I keep the system disks in a RAID1 and the data disks
> on separate RAID arrays setup depending on the application.
> 
> Scratch or temp files -> RAID0
> File serving -> RAID5 or RAID6 (depending on disk size # of disks)
> Databases, large email, many VMS -> RAID10
> 
> Let us know what you want the storage for and we can suggest a
> configuration.
> 
> Top of my head though, I would use the 18GB for the OS and keep
> the 4 36GB for application data either as a RAID10 or RAID5.

That would make sense.  Use RAID1 18GB for /, /boot and /var and use a 
RAID4 with 4 36GB HDD for /vz (OpenVZ's virtual machines are located there).

Makes sense?

Thanks,

Ugo