Ross S. W. Walker wrote: > Rudi Ahlers wrote: > > >> Ross S. W. Walker wrote: >> >>> Rudi Ahlers wrote: >>> >>> >>>> Hi all >>>> >>>> I'm looking at setting up software RAID 10, using CentOS 5.1 x64 - what >>>> is the best way todo this? >>>> >>>> I'm reading some sources on the internet, and get a lot of different >>>> "suggestions" >>>> >>>> 1 suggestion says to boot up with a Live CD like Knoppix or >>>> SystemRescueCD, setup the RAID 10 partitions, and then install Linux >>>> from there. >>>> 2. Another is to setup a small RAID 1 on the first 2 HDD's, install >>>> Linux, bootup, and then setup the rest as RAID 10 >>>> >>>> The others didn't really make sense to me, so how do I >>>> actually do this? >>>> >>>> And then, how do I setup the partitioning? Do I setup /boot on a >>>> separate RAID "partition"? If so, what happens if I want to >>>> replace the 1st 2 HDD's with bigger ones? >>>> >>>> >>> What's the hardware setup? >>> >>> >> I didn't really specify any, cause I want to keep it purely software. >> Generally it would be on a generic PIV motherboard with 4 / 6 >> SATA, or even mixed SATA & IDE HDD's - all new, so at least 80GB per HDD >> > > I was primarily interested in the # of HDDs that can be used. > > If you have 6 disks, setup 2 disks as a RAID1 for the OS and the > other 4 as a RAID10 for the data. > > If you have 4 disks all together: > > 1) create /boot partition as a 4 disk RAID1 across all 4 disks > > 2) create the remaining space as 2 separate RAID1s of type LVM > > 3) create a VG out of the 2 RAID1 PVs, create root, swap LVs on > the VG with a stripe of 2. > > LVM striping over multiple RAID1 PVs provides the same performance > as a native RAID10 array, plus you can add RAID1s later to > increase the size/performance and dump/restore the data to stripe > it across the larger set of PVs. > > -Ross > > _____________________________________________________________________ Thanx, this seems like a fairly easy way of doing it. From what I gather, the data will fill up from the beginning of the stripe, right? So the 1st 2 HDD's will work hardest in the beginning, until there's enough data to fill the other 2 HDD's - unless of cause I split the LV's across the PV's - i.e. put root on md1 & swap or var on md2 for example. Does swap need to be part of the RAID set? Is there actually a performance boost? -- Kind Regards Rudi Ahlers Check out my technical blog, http://blog.softdux.com for Linux or other technical stuff No virus found in this outgoing message. Checked by AVG - http://www.avg.com Version: 8.0.138 / Virus Database: 270.5.6/1574 - Release Date: 7/25/2008 4:27 PM