Web Hosting Talk : Web Hosting Main Forums : Dedicated Server : 2 Disks, 1 Partion

[Jake112345]

this may be a stupid question but is it possible to setup 2 disk on one partion.
i.e (2) 2TB Sata II disks on the / partion = 4TB for the / partion.

thanks

[dvgrhl]

Originally Posted by Jake112345

this may be a stupid question but is it possible to setup 2 disk on one partion.
i.e (2) 2TB Sata II disks on the / partion = 4TB for the / partion.

thanks

Well, you could do this easily with LVM, or RAID 0. For a server I would choose LVM myself.

Edit: Just in case this is totally new to you, LVM stands for Logical Volume Management. There are lots of guides online for setting LVM up with multiple hard disks.

I should also point out that for a server, it would be bad to use all of your disk space (excluding boot and swap) for the root partition. At a minimum you want /tmp in its own space so that if it gets filled up it can't bring your server down. This is what is great about logical volumes. You can create a logical volume for /tmp, /, and /home with whatever sizes you want. Then if one is getting tight on space, you can easily resize the logical volumes.

[Jake112345]

well i will run 4 disks RAID 10,
on the 2 disks
I would have 20GB for the / partion and 512MB swap. (This is for example)
And all the rest for the /home partion.
This would be over 2 disks so this would be possible?

[dvgrhl]

Originally Posted by Jake112345

well i will run 4 disks RAID 10,
on the 2 disks
I would have 20GB for the / partion and 512MB swap. (This is for example)
And all the rest for the /home partion.
This would be over 2 disks so this would be possible?

Well, if it's RAID 10 then the OS will see it as 1 volume anyway, not separate disks. Here is how I would set it up:

All 4 disks in a RAID 10

512mb partition for boot
512mb partition for swap (or whatever size you need)
Rest of space in a volume group
- One logical volume for / size 20gb
- One logical volume for /tmp size (1-4gb)
- One logical volume for /home with rest of the disk space

[Jake112345]

Originally Posted by dvgrhl

Well, if it's RAID 10 then the OS will see it as 1 volume anyway, not separate disks. Here is how I would set it up:

All 4 disks in a RAID 10

512mb partition for boot
512mb partition for swap (or whatever size you need)
Rest of space in a volume group
- One logical volume for / size 20gb
- One logical volume for /tmp size (1-4gb)
- One logical volume for /home with rest of the disk space

ah i see thank you for clearing that up.
only 512mb for /boot ?

[dvgrhl]

Originally Posted by Jake112345

ah i see thank you for clearing that up.
only 512mb for /boot ?

512mb for /boot might be a little big for some people actually. If I remember correctly, Red Hat defaults to 500mb if you let it automatically choose the disk layout. But then their documentation says 250mb should be sufficient for most people: http://docs.redhat.com/docs/en-US/Re...mmend-x86.html.

I think 512mb (just to keep it divisible by 8 ) is more than sufficient and will ensure you don't have any issues.

[silasmoeckel]

Should mention yes it's possible buts it's a pretty bad idea. When one disk fails it will take the whole partition with it.

[dvgrhl]

Originally Posted by silasmoeckel

Should mention yes it's possible buts it's a pretty bad idea. When one disk fails it will take the whole partition with it.

Since he's setting up a RAID10 with 4 disks, at worst case 1 drive could fail, and best case 2, and the array would still be in tact.