Ross S. W. Walker wrote: > Rudi Ahlers wrote: > >> John R Pierce wrote: >> >>> Rudi Ahlers wrote: >>> >>>> 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? >>>> >>> each partition is raided seperately with mdadm.... you could make the >>> whole thing one LVM partition thats raid10, then use LVM to dice it up >>> into file systems. >>> >>> if you have 4 drives and are doing software raid10, you won't be >>> swapping drives with different sizes without a WHOLE lotta pain. >>> >> Ok, so how do I do this? Let's say I have 4x 160GB HDD's now, and plan >> on replacing them with 4x 500GB HDD's in the future? >> > > Personally I would never put an OS install on a higher RAID then RAID1, > because it gets too messy to upgrade like you suggested. > So you're suggesting that I keep the OS separate from the data? But what happens if both the 1st 2 drives with the OS fails, or needs to be replaced? > >> What setup would help with a upgrade in the future? >> >> >>> /boot shouldn't be mirrored, as the BIOS won't know how to boot it. >>> leave /dev/sdb1 the same size as /dev/sda1 and call it /boot2 and try >>> to remember to copy /boot to /boot2 each time you update the kernel. >>> >> I understand this, but how do you boot from /boot2 on the >> second HDD if the 1st have failed? >> > > Could you not get a system that had 2 drives for the OS and 4 drives > for data? > nope, unfortunately not. It's a 2U rackmount chassis with space for only 4 HDD's. I have been thinking about installing the OS onto a USB memory stick, but have never actually got as far as trying to figure out how todo it. > I have setup 4 disk RAID10 systems before, but they were never > intended to be upgraded (in place at least). > > I can forward a couple of recipes, but let me first say that to do > it from the CentOS install media requires 2 RAID1s and LVM striping > because the RAID10 option isn't on the media, but it is functionally > equivalent both in useable space and performance. > Please share your recipes, I'd like to give it a try :) -- Kind Regards Rudi Ahlers Check out my technical blog, http://blog.softdux.com for Linux or other technical stuff