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Obsolete Releases => SME Server 7.x => Topic started by: corsair on May 30, 2007, 01:17:44 PM

Title: RAID6 during/after install w/only 4 disks?
Post by: corsair on May 30, 2007, 01:17:44 PM

G'day folks,

A client has indicated they want the 4x250GB SATA drives in their to-be-installed 7.1 (then 7.1.3) SME Server setup so that / is on a RAID6 partition.  For them, the data redundancy is well worth the space and performance hits.

But, there doesn't seem to be any way to coerce SME 7.1 into such a setup.  So, can anybody suggest a better approach than the following:

[list=1]

• Install a new (temporary) drive
• Boot CD with options "noraid nolvm"
• Perform a standard install to the temporary drive
• Reboot into RESCUE MODE
• Manually create RAID1 for /boot
• Manually create RAID0 for swap (may as well take advantage of the slight performance gain)
• Manually create RAID6 for /
• Create "new" / and /boot filesystems
• Transfer "old" filesystems to their new volumes
• Adjust /etc/fstab
• Adjust /boot/grub/menu.lst (if needed)
• Power down and remove temporary drive
• Reboot
[/list:o]

An alternative for step 6 would be to just use multiple swap partitions (one per drive). That way, the partition tables stay "in sync" and it's much easier to setup.

I had also considered implementing RAID10 but that would also require a temporary drive and is an even more complex process (although we would get almost as much redundancy and slightly better performance than RAID6).

Thanks for any suggestions.