Ross S. W. Walker wrote: > Ugo Bellavance wrote: >> 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? > > Makes sense to me, I have found in my environment that VMs generate a > lot of random io, so a RAID10 may be better suited, though it means > 72GB of useable space instead of 108GB. I understand, but my IO is not very significant... I think I'll use the RAID5 for /vz/ > Also by using growing or sparse files for the vz images, a volume can get > fragmented pretty quickly. To minimzie that from happening, think about > creating LVs with separate small file systems to hold each vz image. If > the LVs start running out of space, you can grow them and the file > system as needed which will reduce the fragmentation tremendously. > You will still end up with LV extents fragmented, but since they are > larger it isn't as serious a performance issue. OpenVZ doesn't work with vz image. It works as a regular filesystem. Thanks a lot for your advice. Ugo