[Fedora-infrastructure-list] Partitioning for New Servers

[Mike McGrath]

On 8/28/06, Warren Togami <wtogami at redhat.com> wrote:
> RH Kernel Engineer Rik van Riel recommended that we use LVM on our new
> servers for flexibility in both the host and guest partitions.
>
> If we reserve two non-LVM partitions on the primary system disk, then we
> will be able to safely remote install a new OS later.  We can boot
> anaconda automated with kickstart or driven with VNC and reinstall
> without harming the existing OS.  If we fail, simply fallback thanks to
> grub savedefault --once.  After install, grub chainloading to the second
> /boot can boot the second OS.  After we confirm the new OS is working
> fine, we can blow away the original host OS and reclaim the space thanks
> to LVM.
>
> The purchased Dell box has four disks.
> The donated Dell box has two disks.
>
> Here's how I envision the first two disks would be partitioned:
> /dev/sda1 /dev/sdb1 => /dev/md1 /boot  200MB
> /dev/sda2 /dev/sdb2 => /dev/md2 /boot2 200MB (reserved for later)
> /dev/sda3 /dev/sdb3 => /dev/md3 vg0 LVM
>
> vg0 contains:
>      swap 2GB
>      / 10GB for host OS
>
> All remaining space can be allocated later for Xen guests or to grow the
> root partition of the host as needed.
>
> The server with the additional two disks can software RAID-1 the entire
> disk, and provide additional flexible storage as vg1 LVM.  Xen guests
> can go on either vg0 or vg1.  We can migrate stuff as needed to balance
> I/O load.
>
> Due to instability of Xen in rawhide in the short-term, we should avoid
> upgrading the host OS until it has stabilized as we approach FC6-final.
>   It should be relatively safe because the host OS is running only sshd
> and is accessible only via bastion.  Later we will be able to safely
> install a host into another LVM partition to see if it runs our guests,
> so risk and hassle is really minimal here.
>
> This is just ideas from my head.  If anybody here has better ideas
> please suggest.
>
> Warren Togami
> wtogami at redhat.com
>

WORKSFORME, I've done similar things with my Xen servers.

           -Mike