[CentOS] settings up cheap a NAS / SAN server, is it possible?

[Les Mikesell]

John R Pierce wrote:
> 
>> ok, so in your setup the OS is totally separate from the data itself?
> 
> indeed, almost all my servers are setup this way, too.   A pair of 
> smaller disks, 36GB or 80GB are mirrored for the OS and software, then 
> populate the rest with large disks in raid10  or raid5 for whatever task 
> this server is intended for (database or bulk storage, or whatever).

This strategy is probably most useful when you have several machines 
that are similar enough to swap drives and keep a spare chassis around 
that you can use as a backup and to build/test your next major update. I 
generally use smaller disks for the 1st pair, but if there is extra 
space you can use it for something that changes slowly enough that you 
would be able to rsync it over to the replacement before the swap.  The 
main thing is to not include the OS drives in LVM or RAID0 with the 
others that you don't expect to swap.

-- 
   Les Mikesell
    lesmikesell at gmail.com