Ok,
I am trying out FC3 RC2... installing on two identically configured
machines:
HP Proliant ml330 g3
768mb RAM
Adaptec Serial ATA RAID 2410SA Enclosure Kit
4 300GB SATA Maxtor drives configured as RAID5
I have not used the onboard IDE or the onboard IDE raid as they are evil
non-standard beasts - but with the above RAID I'm not too upset.
Now I have a question about the new (to me) Volume Manager options when
partitioning the drive. In the past I would partition the drive as follows:
100mb - /boot
15gb - /
152mb - swap partition
Remainder of drive - /home
With the above I can install a new OS easily by simply formatting the
first three partitions and leaving the /home parition alone so the data
is available with a fresh install. BUT, I would never be able to resize
the /home partition unless I wanted to delete the partition and lose the
data on the partition.
Now with the LVM option I am thinking of doing the following:
Create 100mb /boot parition (outside of the volume)
Creating one Volume Group for the remainder of the array called: RAID5Array
In that Group create three Logical Volume names:
LinuxDrive = / = 15gb
SwapFile = Swap partition = 1520mb
HomeDrive = /home = Remainder of array ~840gb
With this setup I should be able to the following:
- Resize any of the Logical Volume Names without destroying data
- Add a second RAID5 array - make it part of the RAID5Array and then add
the new capacity to either a new Logical Volume Name or to expand one
(or more) of the existing Logical Volumes to use the new storage
capacity. This can be done without destroying any data.
I just have some questions regarding this:
1) Soooo, is my understanding of LVM correct, or am I missing something
very important?
2) Is these any performance hit with using LVM versus the older method
of paritioning the hard drive?
If posting this query here is incorrect, I apologize, but Volumes are
being created when your use "autopartition" during the install process
in FC3. (And FC2 did not create volumes during the autopartition
stage... so I ignored it back then.) So I thought I would ask here -
but if I should ask this elsewhere I would appreciate being pointed in
the correct direction.
Thanks.
--- Charles