Topic: LVM with Dual Hard Disks

[blackbird098]

Hello All-  
 Can anyone tell me if its possible to setup LVM on SME 7.1 with 2 hard drives, utilizing LVM for extra capacity and not redundancy? I currently run v6.5 with two disks and used the add 2nd disk contrib that's been here for a while now and its making management a bit of a pain now. If possible I'd like do a fresh install of SME 7.1 and use the 2 500gb drives to look like 1tb and move all my data from 6.5 over to the new setup... Any help would be greatly appreciated.

[gordonr]

Hello All-  
 Can anyone tell me if its possible to setup LVM on SME 7.1 with 2 hard drives, utilizing LVM for extra capacity and not redundancy?

Yes. Install with one drive connected, or you could use the 'noraid' option if you prefer. Personally, I'd do a one-way RAID to allow later mirroring. Check out the various boot time options on the 7.1 CD.

[blackbird098]

Yes. Install with one drive connected, or you could use the 'noraid' option if you prefer. Personally, I'd do a one-way RAID to allow later mirroring. Check out the various boot time options on the 7.1 CD.

I have installed this using both the 'noraid' option and with 1 drive connected and plugging in the 2nd drive after I've run through the base configuration......the part I need help with is how to add the 2nd drive to the group so when I enter df -k it shows somewhere around 1tb versus the 500gb I see now. I tried to follow the  LVM How-to but  found it really tough to follow so I'm hoping someone out there has successfully done this and can give me the instructions and yes I'm a noob at this type of system administration

[byte]

Moving this topic to the SME Server 7.x forum, it is more appropriate there. Thanks!

[Gaston94]

Hi,
you have different options :

 - install the SME with "noraid" then partition your second disk and perform a "vgextend main /dev/xxx" (main is the VG which is being created at installation time

 - you might also consider creating a RAID 0 array (striping) over you two disks.This does not provide any redundancy but allow managing large volumes. But I do not know how to proceed through SME installation process

G.

[byte]

 - you might also consider creating a RAID 0 array (striping) over you two disks.This does not provide any redundancy but allow managing large volumes. But I do not know how to proceed through SME installation process
G.

I would strongly disagree with doing RAID 0 because if one disk goes down thats it you've lost your whole data.

[blackbird098]

Hi,
you have different options :

 - install the SME with "noraid" then partition your second disk and perform a "vgextend main /dev/xxx" (main is the VG which is being created at installation time

 - you might also consider creating a RAID 0 array (striping) over you two disks.This does not provide any redundancy but allow managing large volumes. But I do not know how to proceed through SME installation process

G.

Ok I did another fresh install using the 'sme noraid' option and after an hour of messing around I was able to get the vgextend to work. I did a display of the vg and it shows a total 465gb which is correct. I entered df -k and it still only show about 250gb available, now my next question is what commands do I need to enter to make that extra 250gb available for use? so next time I enter df -k it'll show 465gb available.

[Gaston94]

Hi,
once you have extend the VG, either you add new LV or you perform a lvextend and resize2fs on your current volume.
You can have a look for instance at some howto these operations might required you to umount the FS.

As Byte mentionned, what you are trying to do is not the best thing talking about data healthy (I do think that RAID0 and what I understood, you are planning to do is equivalent on this point).
Be also carrefull at what you are talking about : a "df " command is a FileSystem one, so you are meaning to increase your FS size over the two disks. This might not be the best choice, and I still do not understand this kind of layout.
But technically speaking, what you are asking about can be done  ... at your own risk.

G.