Any advice for a Partition Plan for a multi-jailed Server?

[Federico Lorenzi]

On 9/26/07, Mel <fbsd.questions at rachie.is-a-geek.net> wrote:
> On Wednesday 26 September 2007 22:20:11 Aliya Harbouri wrote:
> > Hi!
> >
> > I'm setting up a jailed server. I'm hoping to eventually use
> > sysutils/ezjail to deaden the pain a bit!
> >
> > First step, have to get the disks partitioned! They're unpacked, at least
> > ;-)
> >
> > I've read lots of comments like,
> >
> >   "You should never setup your FreeBSD systems the way Linux or other
> > *nix's set them up."
> >
> > So, I'm looking for some Wisdom on how best to partition for the usage
> > I'm planning.
> >
> > The server's goal state is 4 jails, plus the non-jailed host:
> >
> > jail-1: DNS services {Bind9 & RBLDNSD}
> > jail-2: WebServer    {Apache 22x + PHP5 + Perl 588 + MySQL 50x}
> > jail-3: mail server  {Exim 468 + Spamassassin + ClamAV, etc.}
> > jail-4: an analysis/monitoring toolkit {Snort, Nagios, Nessus, etc.}
> >
> > I've got two identical 250 GB SATA2 drives available for this box.
> >
> > Although I have not yet grokked the whole "What's in a jail's dirs?"
> > issue, my initial stab at 'slices' is ~:
> >
> >       drive 2:
> >               /       2GB
> >               /boot   2GB
>
> /boot *needs* to be on /. A loader looks for [bootdisk][bootslice]
> [a]/boot/loader.
>
> >               /tmp    2GB
> >               /swap   16GB    Machine has 8GB RAM, so swap = 2X RAM
>
> Since you have 2 physical drives, you may want to do 8G on each drive. In the
> rare case it's needed, your system is in trouble and being able to swap on
> using 2 drives will be a plus.
>
> >               /usr    50GB
> >               /jails  178GB
> >
> >       drive 2:
> >               /var    100GB
> >               /data   100GB   MailStore, DBs, www source files, etc.
>
> Unless you're a packrat where logs are concerned, you can probably do with:
> /var 10G (on disk 1)
> And use:
> /var/db 100G - this will house MySQL primarily
> /var/spool 10-50G - any queues, most notably mail, disable softupdates. Adjust
> size to match your mail payload.
> /var/mail - "rest" - possibly disable softupdates.
>
> Allthough, I think MySQL will generally use less space then a mail storage,
> but this all depends on your users.
>
> >               /home   20GB
>
> By default, the WWW root on bsd for apache is /usr/local/www and generally on
> servers like this, home can be done with 2G or less. *Unless* you plan on
> providing /~username/ service, then home might be on the light side.
>
> I'm generally a fan of separating trees that can grow out of proportion over
> time, so that you can dump(8) the partition and restore(8) it on a new drive
> without too much worry. Your mileage may vary.
>
> Also have a look at hier(7) manpage, it's quite informative about the default
> filesystem layout BSD uses.
> --

Um, from what I've understood, it's going to be a jail server, those
defaults would
be all well and good for a normal server, but in this case we want a big
/data. and moderate /jails.

Here are my recommendations:
/
-> Small, painfully so. 512MB

/var
-> Nothing should really go in here if you are using Jails. Including
EZjail, that should
be somewhere under /usr... 2GB

/tmp
-> Not to big really, remember everything goes in a Jail... 2GB
--> Symlink /var/tmp to here

/usr
-> Again, and now i sound like a broken record. However, since ports
can get quite
big be a little more generous... 15GB

/jails
-> Doesn't really need to be too big, the max I say one jail could
reach is 10GB without
data, which falls under /data... 50GB

/home
-> Should be medium sized... 20GB

/data
-> I have no clue what your requirements will be, so 100GB should
cover everything
a few times over... Rest of disk... ~170GB

This should be just fine, and you can have your disks in RAID 1.
As for performance, RAID 1 doubles read speed.

Cheers
Federico

PS) I take you know how to use NullFS and the like?