[plug] Home Server LVM/RAID stuff

[Arie Hol]

On 19 Aug 2008 at 17:03, Trevor Phillips wrote:

> I have a home server, and am living in the stone age, it seems - just
> standard physical partitions. Adding disk is easy enough, but then the
> new space is on a new mount point, no redundancy, running out of
> space, yadda yadda...
> 
> Recently, a friend raved about how wonderful Windows Home Server was -
> and it did sound quite impressive, what it was capable of. It's
> motivated me to pull my finger out and try and do things better (and
> safer) on my home server. However, my Linux server already does stuff
> Windows Home Server never will - and this is the PLUG list - so I've
> been reading up on similar Linux solutions.
> 
> There's basically two key features I'd really really like:
> 
> 1) Being able to add more disk, and add that space to existing
> partitions: LVM seems to fit this spot-on.
> 2) Being able to have data redundancy on SOME content, across drives,
> in case of physical failure. Linux Software Raid sort of does this.
> 
> Now, really, only about 1/4 of my data I really need redundancy on.
> You know, important stuff like photos, mail, tax documents, etc... All
> the rest is typically regainable (ripped CDs/Video), or I wouldn't
> shed too many tears over losing. So a full RAID1 config is way
> overkill. Yes, disk is cheap, but the Wife won't necessarily buy that
> argument. -_^
> 
> Back to Windows Home Server - this does both these tasks in one. You
> can throw in more disk, have it add to volumes as you want, and you
> can also tag content (I believe it's per FOLDER, not even per volume)
> to keep a redundant copy on separate physical disks. It sounds like
> doing all this, and changing the configuration, is a cinch.
> 
> So far, the best solution to me sounds like it involves creating 2
> partitions (on separate disk, same size), RAID1ing them, and using
> that for my important data, then using LVM for the rest of the less
> important bulky data. Probably best to even use LVM with the RAID1 as
> well.
> 
> I've read 2 ways of treating this LVM/RAID combo though - one was to
> RAID the physical partitions, then create the LVM out of the resultant
> raid partition. The other was to create 2 LVM logical partitions, in
> separate groups, on separate disks, and RAID on top of that.
> 
> The former sounds neater, more efficient - but also sounds like it has
> the old problem of being difficult to resize. I guess you could create
> extra partitions later, RAID them separately, then add them to the LVM
> of the first raid, but it seems tricky.
> 
> The latter sounds messier, but potentially easier to resize the raided
> content later, since the RAID partitions are on LVM partitions, which
> can be extended more easily.
> 
> What experiences have others had with setting up a similar setup? How
> do these two solutions compare for performance & flexibility?
> 
> Are there any other neat solutions to do what I want? Ideally I wish
> LVM could handle physical redundancy of a logical partition
> automatically. If Microsoft can do it, why not Linux!
> 
> Thanks...

Have a look at the tutorials done by IBM at :


http://www.ibm.com/developerworks/linux/library/l-lvm/

http://www.ibm.com/developerworks/linux/library/l-lvm2.html

http://www.ibm.com/developerworks/linux/library/l-lvm2/


If these don't help - just use the search box at the top right of the 
page - then browse  results.

Good Luck.

HTH

Regards Arie
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