Best way to create a large data space

[stan]

On Fri, Jul 14, 2006 at 05:14:45PM +0100, Alex Zbyslaw wrote:
> John Nielsen wrote:
> 
> >On Friday 14 July 2006 10:37, John Nielsen wrote:
> > 
> >
> >>On Thursday 13 July 2006 20:24, stan wrote:
> >>   
> >>
> >>>On Thu, Jul 13, 2006 at 04:20:56PM -0400, John Nielsen wrote:
> >>>     
> >>>
> >>>>On Thursday 13 July 2006 08:34, stan wrote:
> >>>>       
> >>>>
> >>>>>i have a Sun Ultra 40 with 4 500F SATA drives. I plan on using this
> >>>>>machine primarily for a large data storage requirement.
> >>>>>
> >>>>>What I want is one large /data partition. Given all the choices for
> >>>>>doing this in FreeBSD (software) what's the "best" choice here? The
> >>>>>partio will be shared via SAMBA if that affects the thhinking here.
> >>>>>         
> >>>>>
> >>>>"Best" really depends on what your needs and goals are. Here's a quick
> >>>>overview of what the choices ARE, based mostly on memory. Corrections
> >>>>and additions welcome. I'll try to make some notes about pros and cons
> >>>>as well.
> >>>>       
> >>>>
> >>>Thanks for the nice summary.
> >>>
> >>>The data will be backed up nightly, so I'll probably use gstirpe to get
> >>>the maximum capicty. RAID5 would not work very well with 3 x 500G
> >>>(asuuming that I can't use the 500G that I put the system on).
> >>>     
> >>>
> >>If that's really what you want to do then here are a couple more tips. You
> >>can't boot from a gstripe volume, and when (not if) one of your drives 
> >>goes
> >>bad you'll be happier if you only lose your data and not your entire OS. 
> >>So
> >>plan to partition the drives and use gmirror for the base OS (since you 
> >>can
> >>boot from a gmirror volume). Make a relatively small partition (10GB?) at
> >>the beginning of each drive. Make a gmirror volume using two or three of
> >>them and install the OS to that volume. Use the remaining one or two small
> >>partitions for swap or utility partitions. Then make your giant gstripe
> >>volume out of the large partitions on all four drives.
> >>   
> >>
> >
> >Or better yet, make a gvinum RAID5 volume with the four large partitions.
> >
> >I think the only tool in my original list that requires you to use the 
> >entire disk is ataraid(4).
> > 
> >
> Just my two pence to a lot of detailed and good-looking suggestions.
> 
> *If* the machine will take two more disks I might get a couple of small 
> SATAs which I would use for the OS (mirroring however you want), leaving 
> the entirety of the all the big disks for your data storage.  For me, 
> that would give conceptual simplicity (big disk = data, small disk = OS) 
> and little messing around with slices on the data disks.
> 
> If you can boot USB, then perhaps a USB stick or somesuch for the OS?  
> (With duplicates in a fire safe!).  Less resilience but again frees up 
> all the disks for data.  Might depend on what else you want the machine 
> to do.  Reader emptor - I've never done this, just read about it!
> 
It's maxed out on drive locations, but the idea of a USB bot is
interesting...

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