[CentOS] Backup and reinstall a CentOS server

Wed Sep 3 09:04:04 UTC 2008
Marco Fretz <mailinglist at blah.li>

admin wrote:
> I believe that if /boot is on RAID1, that md partition has to be on one
> of the first two disks (eg hda, hdb)?
> 
> Is there any problem with having /boot on a RAID1 partition across 4
> disks as follows?
> 
>     /boot    / (LVM)
> hda    RAID1    RAID5
> hdb    RAID1    RAID5
> hdc    RAID1    RAID5
> hdd    RAID1    RAID5
> 

The boot loader (GRUB) must be installed in the MBR on a hard disk from
which the BIOS can boot. With 4 disks, you can install GRUB on all
disks, so you can boot even if the first 2 disks fail.

I think it doesn't matter if /boot is the first or another md raid
device. It just must not be a LVM.

> What about swap? It is best on RAID1, RAID5, LVM, something else or
> doesn't matter?

we're using swap via LVM without any performance problems. but my
opinion is if a server begins to swap things will get slow anyway no
matter what type of disk you're using for swap (maybe excluding flash
drives / ramfs).

> 
> Mick
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