solaris slices / partitions 2

[fluid11]

I plan set up a Solaris 8 server running Lotus Domino R5 Mail server. The server will replace my Windows 2000 / Exchange 2000 server that I'm sick of. I'm new to Solaris and need some help setting up my partitions or slices. I have (4) 18GB SCSI hard drives set in a hardware RAID 5 giving me approx. 54GB of disk space. I'm a little unsure of how I should set up my partitions or slices on the disk. I don't see why I can't just create a 53.5GB / (root) partition and 500MB of swap space. The only thing that this server is going to do is run Lotus Domino R5 Mail for about 50 users. The server is a P3-866 with 2GB of RAM.

Any help is greatly appreciated.

Thanks in advance,
Chris

 

[marrow]

You could use the Solaris auto-layout feature which is an option vailable during a system build. The system will allocate root and all partition it requires.

 

[fluid11]

Thanks for your reply.

Is there a recommended partition layout that I should use for such a setup? Which partitions should I use (Solaris, UNIX, etc.)? I'm new to Solaris but I feel I can pick it up quickly from my past Linux experience.

 

[harris79]

There is a lot of debate on this subject.
In the days of 2.1 Gb (and smaller) disks, it was advisable to create seperate filesystems on seperate partitions. So if the /var filesystem filled up with logs it didn't swamp the whole disk.
Now with bigger disks this is not such a problem, however
backing up and restoring a 53Gb partition would be a problem.
For this reason it is worth creating seperate partitions that can be backed up seperately.

So you really have 3 options-
The big root option you started with.

Manually allocated partitions/filesystems, worked out from the Solaris documentation or by looking at similar systems.
Something like 2Gb /, 1GB /var, 1GB /opt, 1Gb /usr, 1Gb swap
and the remainer in 1 or 2 partitions (u01/u02) for the application data.
This would give you space in the second application partition for any future additional uses.

And thirdly, by far the easiest option, using the auto layout feature. For a beginner it's a very good place to start, for the more experienced it provides a quick and easy way to get a system built.

Steve

 

[marrow]

Just adding to Harris79, as long as you select the boot disk (normally target 0 - c0t0d0) Solaris will allocate what it requires.

If it's a new system why not try it and see. If it goes wrong or you'r not happy, simply do it again.

 

[fluid11]

Is there anything wrong with using a big / partition? Backing up and restoring only certain partitions is not a problem. The thing that worries me about creating multiple partitions at different mount points is the possibility of running out of space on one of the partitions. Its hard to tell how much disk space is going to be used in each folder.

Also, my other question is what type of file system should I use? I'm new to Solaris and I'm not sure if I should use UNIX, Solaris, etc. partitions.

 

[marrow]

First of all Solaris 8 is Sun's latest version of UNIX, and is a follow up to Solaris 2.6 and Solaris 7 (2.7). Solaris 9 is next but I don't know when. If you are starting afresh go for Solaris 8. At our site we are upgrading our Sun Servers from Solaris 2.6 (support to finish soon) to Solaris 8. We didn't bother with Solaris 7.

As for Root yes you can have it bigger, we use anything fom 100MB to 1500MB, depends on the size of disks available, I don't know the exact recommendations but I can't see any benefit in 53GB root and would appear to me wasteful. As for swap space it used to be 2 x Physical Memory but this is no longer the case, much less is required especially if root is big, maybe swap is now half the size of Physical memory.

Bye foe now

 

[fluid11]

I think you mis-understood me when I asked what file system to use. I must have worded it poorly. When you run fdisk during the Solaris installation, you have to select the partition type (examples - Solaris, DOS12, UNIX, x86 Boot, PCIXOS, DOSEXT, FAT32LBA, etc.). Which types of partitions should I create? I was guessing either Solaris or UNIX partitions and maybe a x86 Boot.

The thing that I don't understand is what is the difference if I had (1) 10GB / partition or if I had a 2GB /usr, 2GB /var, 2GB /, 4GB /home? If I put all the disk space into the / partition, then I'm free to create files anywhere in the file system. I'm not limited in any directories to a certain amount of disk space. If this is a bad idea, can you please show me the partition sizes and mount points that you would recommned for my system?

Thanks for your help again.

 

[lfoata]

If you are only running Solaris on that box, use solaris file system provided with the OS.
One good reason not to put everything in / is that if any user or software or process fills up /, the server will hang.
With the file system layout harris79 recommended, you should not run in any space problem.
I you are afraid to run out of space, you can get Veritas Volume Manager to dynamically expand sile systems given you have to free space.
I would also recommend mirroring the OS with disksuite instead of using a raid 5. You can use raid 5 for your applications file system, but not a good idea for the os. Too bad I.T. is not cash business

Luc Foata
Unix sysadmin, Oracle DBA