Large filesystems help/ideas

[Matias Surdi]

David Robillard escribió:
>> Hi,
>> I'm implementing a backup solution at work.We've bought a x86 server
>> with two hardware raid 5 with for a total storage capacity of about 7Tb.
>>
>> For the software we are using for backups, the ideal scenario would be
>> to have just one "big disk" so that no space problems would appear.
>>
>> I've tried to install FreeBSD 7 with no success, as it seems... the
>> sysinstall tool doesn't support such big slices.
>>
>> I've read about the "Large Data Storage on FreeBSD" but I'm still confused.
>>
>> I've also thought on using slices of 1Tb, and join all them using vinum.
>> What do you think about this last option?
>>
>> Thanks a lot for your help.
> 
> I would suggest to use different partitions for your OS and another
> big one for your backup data. In fact, if you can use two smaller
> disks in RAID 1 for the OS and leave your two RAID 5 for the backup
> data alone, that would be even better.
> 
> This way you can both a) install the OS without any problem and b)
> prevent a *very* long fsck in case the machine crashes and your 7TB
> partition is broken beyond the background fsck process. Once you have
> the OS installed on the smaller partitions, you can then use gpt(8) to
> create your 2TB+ filesystems.  YMMV.
> 
> We use a scenario quite identical as what you're trying to do. We use
> a few ports to do so, like sysutils/rsnapshot and shells/rssh with
> rsync and OpenSSH along with an encrypted backup volume and OpenPGP to
> encrypt the tapes. For VMWare images, we use sysutils/rdiff-backup. It
> works very well for 100+ mixed FreeBSD, RedHat, Ubuntu and AIX hosts.
> If you need any help with the backup setup and all, just ask, I'll
> send you the howto.
> 
> Have fun,
> 
> DA+


Thanks a lot for your invaluable help guys, now I've a better idea about 
this.