Partitioning "Lamp" server

[jay-R5TnC2l8y5lBDgjK7y7TUQ at public.gmane.org]

The raid configuration us use will depend upon what you top priorities are.  If performance is the primary goal, I would recomend a 2 drive raid 1 for your server as you mentioned, but use the remaining 4 drives in a raid 1+0 ( 2 mirrors of 2 drives that are stripped).  This done correctly will give you maximum read performance, on the data drives.

If your looking to maximize up time, I would run all 6 drives in a raid 6.  With a raid 5 or mirror bad sectors (which often are not discovered till its to late)  or a drive failure durring rebuilding will mean having to restore from backups. 

Overall your solution will give a good  balance of reliability, speed, and drive space.  Provided you have a fast means of restoring from a backup, in the event something goes wrong durring a rebuild.

Sent from my BlackBerry® smartphone with SprintSpeed

-----Original Message-----
From: "Stephen Goldman" <sgoldman-3s7WtUTddSA at public.gmane.org>
Date: Sat, 31 Oct 2009 09:26:31 
To: <discuss-mNDKBlG2WHs at public.gmane.org>
Subject: Partitioning "Lamp" server

Hello Jerry,
    There is a total of six drives :
        With the raid card I was planning on creating two partitions-

        Raid one for the OS
        Raid five for the data & db

        The why -can be subjective- 
        I was under the impression of performance gains and redundancy with RAID 5 on the db partition. may be wrong..

        Please confirm that Mysql can be configured to live on the /dev/sdb1

Thanks,
Stephen



I have no issues with your partitioning scheme, but a few questions. Why
have /dev/sda RAID 1 and /dev/sdb RAID 5? I thought that a single RAID
volume required 2 separate physical volumes volumes.
Secondly, I would probably want to use LVM to give you greater
flexibility so you can resize and move things around.



On 10/31/2009 07:01 AM, Stephen Goldman wrote:
> Hello Blu,
>     Request insight on partitioning a new "LAMP" server with two partitions. 
>     Seeking input from others more experienced than me.. thanks,   
>     Are there any posted guidelines for best performance. Wish to provide best product
>    
>     The device is a brand new Dell server with: 
>     /dev/sda    raid one 160 G
>     /dev/sdb    raid five 270G 
>
>     32 G physical ram
>     RHEL 5.3
>
>     My plan was to partition /dev/sda as follows:
>
>     /            25  G
>     /            20  G swap
>     / var       25 G
>     /tmp      20  G
>     /home   remainder
>
>     /dev/sdb
>
>     /data    =  270 G
>
>     I am provisioning the machine for others who will configure ,Apache and Mysql
>
>
>     I suggested they redirect the Apache root folders and Mysql db to run on /dev/sdb.
>     The researcher who is creating the site states he has only worked with both services when configured inside /var.
>     Limited experience.
>
>     I know the Apache can be redirected .. but no sure of how the redirect Mysql   to live on       /dev/sdb --
>     
>     Questions: 
>     Does the partitioning scheme make sense .. 
>     Is there performance gains running the services on the partition /dev/sdb
>     Is it difficult to redirect the services on /dev/sdb ?
>     Is it easier to place /var  on  /dev/sdb  size it to the whole partition? 
>     
>     /home does not need to be  70 G .. but the space  is there //
>
>     Thanks for you input,
>






Stephen Goldman
Systems Administrator
Department of Biology
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
31 Ames Street, Cambridge, MA 02139
sgoldman-3s7WtUTddSA at public.gmane.org, (617) 452-2595