Partitioning RAID

[Guruwannabe]

I want to set up redhat 7.2 server. Could some1 please help me in sizing the partitions for a RAID ~200GB (8 disks). Does raid behave as a single HD or do you have to create partitions on seperate drives. If one wants to have a flatfile database on the root partition what size should you allocate create that partition baring in mind it will be continuously be added to, the current size of it will be 4 gigs.
Is there any good website that you can recommend to read up on partitioning RAID.
Much appreciated if any1 can help on this. Thanx.

 

[bjverzal]

A RAID array will be presented to you as a single drive.

Bill.

 

[dan]

I had a tech from Red Hat helping me set up partitions on my system. He suggested 500 meg for swap file (I have 521 Meg ram in server) and the rest as /. That way you won't have to worry about running out of space. (We are using hardware raid with 36 gig available.) So far, this has worked really well.
Dan

 

[bgarlock]

One thing that's nice about partitioning a server machine, is to protect against "local" denial of service attacks. I like to put /var on a seperate partition, as well as /home, /tmp, /usr and /boot.

I recommend a minimum of a / /tmp /var /boot partitions. I usually do a /home, too. Keeping /var on it's own partition would keep the rest of the system going, if the printer and mail spool directories were to fill up (DoS). Same goes for /tmp partitions, which are usually writable by everyone. That way, if someone decides to get "cute" they are limited to the damage they can do.

If your machine was a workstatuon, then a / and /boot would do.

Bruce Garlock
bruceg@tiac.net

http://bruceg.dyndns.org

 

[chiph]

Guruwannabe -

For the most part, the RAID hardware will present the drives as a single volume. Some will give you the option of creating multiple volumes off your drives. You don't get any more protection (data-loss-wise) by doing this, but you do get more convenience in partitioning your data (OS on one, user data on another, etc). Bruce has a good idea too, in that if for some reason someone finds a hole in some server software you've loaded, there's a chance they won't be able to leave the partition.

Don't forget that, even though you're well-protected against a hard-drive crash, you should still be doing back-ups. It's not out of the realm of possibility that you could have two drives go down simultaneously.

BTW: What style RAID have you chosen?

Chip H.