On Sat, Jun 5, 2010 at 10:19 AM, Leslie Rhorer <lrhorer@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote: >> -----Original Message----- >> From: linux-raid-owner@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx [mailto:linux-raid- >> owner@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of Carlos Mennens >> Sent: Wednesday, June 02, 2010 8:00 AM >> To: Mdadm >> Subject: Re: RAID Configuration For New Home Server >> >> On Wed, Jun 2, 2010 at 3:54 AM, <tron@xxxxxxxxxx> wrote: >> > There are about as many answers to this as there are people using your >> > setup so let's all agree that there's no "one way" of doing things. >> >> Thanks for all the suggestions and you guys are right. There will no >> right or wrong answer here but I just want to make sure I am not doing >> anything that will hinder / limit performance in my system. At most my >> system will simply idle and do nothing more than store a few files for >> me so I think RAID5 is going to be my selection for my / file system. >> I have 4 identical drives and need to partition them all the same to >> avoid any inconsistencies across the RAID array. Since Grub doesn't >> support RAID5 for /boot, I will need to make a 4 disk RAID1 for /boot >> & do the same for Swap. Does this look reasonable to you guys? >> >> Partitioning the 1st disk below: >> >> /dev/sda1 100 MB - RAID (bootable) >> /dev/sda2 2 GB - RAID >> /dev/sda3 320 GB - RAID >> >> Do that same partition schema above for all 4 drives and then create my >> RAID: >> >> / >> mdadm --create /dev/md0 --level=5 --raid-devices=4 /dev/sda3 /dev/sdb3 >> /dev/sdc3 /dev/sdd3 >> >> /boot >> mdadm --create /dev/md1 --level=1 --raid-devices=4 /dev/sda1 /dev/sdb1 >> /dev/sdc1 /dev/sdd1 >> >> Swap >> mdadm --create /dev/md2 --level=1 --raid-devices=4 /dev/sda2 /dev/sdb2 >> /dev/sdc2 /dev/sdd2 > > It's certainly workable. You might consider something other than > RAID1 for your swap partition. Looks reasonable. Some comments: 1) I didn't bother using RAID on my /boot. I just installed grub on each of the 3 drives but only boot from the first one. If that partition goes bad I can boot from the second or third drive any time by just telling BIOS to use a different drive. This saves me from dealing with any mkinitrd stuff. I've never had a boot partition go bad because of the drive itself in 14 years running Linux. They go bad because I write the wrong stuff there. RAID doesn't solve that problem. This method does require that I update the two backups by hand once in awhile. That's OK by me. 2) I don't use RAID for swap. I let the kernel do that internally. I almost never swap out on my home server so trying to protect that with RAID for the few moments I might use it seems like overkill to me. 3) Your main RAID is exactly what I use on my home server, albeit I use 3 drives, not 4. HTH, Mark -- To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-raid" in the body of a message to majordomo@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx More majordomo info at http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html
