[linux-lvm] Wisdom of multiple disks in one VG

Stuart D. Gathman stuart at bmsi.com
Tue Jul 22 04:00:13 UTC 2008


On Mon, 21 Jul 2008, Chris Cox wrote:

> > I have several disks, but they are all different sizes and so don't seem
> > like good candidates for a scheme with redundancy (e.g., RAID 5).

Use software raid 1, and you can mix different disk sizes.  It is somewhat
tedious when done via md driver, but quite workable.

For instance, if you have disks of 120, 200, 400 Gigs, create 120, 200, 80G
partitions on the 400.  Mirror the 120 and 200 partitions, and add to 
a volume group.  Mount the 80G as a /work partition, and convert it to 
a mirror when you get another disk.

In AIX, you just allocated mirrored LVs, and didn't have to think about
it.  Linux LVM is getting there.  If you have 3 or more physical disks,
I think the current LV mirror code will do what you want also.  (But
I confess I am still using LVM over md raid 1.)

-- 
	      Stuart D. Gathman <stuart at bmsi.com>
    Business Management Systems Inc.  Phone: 703 591-0911 Fax: 703 591-6154
"Confutatis maledictis, flammis acribus addictis" - background song for
a Microsoft sponsored "Where do you want to go from here?" commercial.




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