New HDA Setup

[felipeds]

My Server Hardware:

Case: Lian Li PC-A17B with 3x Lian Li EX-H34-B for a total of 12x 3.5 hotswap bays
PSU: Enermax ERV1050EWT 1050 watt (overkill I know, but it's from a previous build)
RAID: Adaptec 2252600-R 12-Port with Battery Module 800
HD: 12x mixture of SATA 1TB WD and Seagates in Raid 6, 1x 300GB WD VelociRaptor as Virtual Machine Drive, 2x emphase Industrial SATA Flash Module 8GB in Raid 1 as OS drive
HD Backup: Rosewill RSV-S8 8-bay External Enclosure w/ 5x 1.5TB HDs in Raid 5
MB: Supermicro MBD-X7SBL-LN2
CPU: Intel E8200 2.66Ghz Wolfdale
Memory: 8GB (4x Crucial 2GB DDR2800 ECC CT25672AA800)
UPS: APC Smart-UPS 750VA via Serial

I'm currently running Openfiler but it's generated too many headaches and it's very hard to setup. I got it working but mac file sharing is iffy at best. Plus it is not nearly as feature rich and I'm assuming easy to setup as Amahi. Also I love the idea of this running on top of major linux distro, I'll make installing other apps like vmware server and iStat server much easier. My UPS also is not compatible with open filer.

My questions involves how should I partition this setup.

First, what's the best filesystem that allows easy expandability. I want to expand my backup array as my storage needs grow.

Second, is it a good idea to use ext4 with fedora 10? I want to future proof my current setup for when Amahi is compatibie with fedora 11. I'm also assuming that ext4 allows for easy expandability.

Third, for my backup array I want to backup both the server and the primary data array. Should I make two partitions for this?

Four, how is the server backup done? Does it create an image that I could easily put on an HD and boot off of that, in case somehow both flash drives fail or there's some major system issue.

Fifth, since I'm using flash drives for my primary OS drive, is swap necessary?

This is my idea so far:

/boot ext3 100MB (default)
/swap swap 2GB
/ ext3 6GB
/var/hda/files ext4 ~10TB

Backup will be around 6TB and ext4, what's the best mount point for this? What's the best way to setup the server backup in general? I rather have a system where NOTHING is ever erased from the backup, only written too. Maybe some kind of incremental backup.

[moredruid]

First, what's the best filesystem that allows easy expandability. I want to expand my backup array as my storage needs grow.

use LVM, you can resize online. ext2/3/4, reiserfs, jfs, pick your flavour

Second, is it a good idea to use ext4 with fedora 10? I want to future proof my current setup for when Amahi is compatibie with fedora 11. I'm also assuming that ext4 allows for easy expandability.

ext2/3/4 allow for online resizing. ext4 still has some quirks, ext3 is most used. Fedora 11 ships with ext4 as default.

Third, for my backup array I want to backup both the server and the primary data array. Should I make two partitions for this?

what do you mean by backup array? are these RAID5 for redundancy? for "real" backup I recommend either tape (DLT/DAT) or external disks, stored off-site (set up an rsync exchange with a friend, you keep his backup, he keeps yours).

Four, how is the server backup done? Does it create an image that I could easily put on an HD and boot off of that, in case somehow both flash drives fail or there's some major system issue.

the server is not backed up by default. this you should configure yourself. you can backup the clients on a share or create disk images by pxe-booting them and creating a backup.

Fifth, since I'm using flash drives for my primary OS drive, is swap necessary?

yes it is (very much) recommended, the type of drive doesn't really matter, it's just that if the OS runs out of memory it can swap out. however with your amount of memory and Amahi's requirements I don't think you'll hit the roof any time soon so I'd recommend using 1 or 2 GB as swap.

[felipeds]

First, what's the best filesystem that allows easy expandability. I want to expand my backup array as my storage needs grow.

use LVM, you can resize online. ext2/3/4, reiserfs, jfs, pick your flavour

Second, is it a good idea to use ext4 with fedora 10? I want to future proof my current setup for when Amahi is compatibie with fedora 11. I'm also assuming that ext4 allows for easy expandability.

ext2/3/4 allow for online resizing. ext4 still has some quirks, ext3 is most used. Fedora 11 ships with ext4 as default.

Third, for my backup array I want to backup both the server and the primary data array. Should I make two partitions for this?

what do you mean by backup array? are these RAID5 for redundancy? for "real" backup I recommend either tape (DLT/DAT) or external disks, stored off-site (set up an rsync exchange with a friend, you keep his backup, he keeps yours).

Four, how is the server backup done? Does it create an image that I could easily put on an HD and boot off of that, in case somehow both flash drives fail or there's some major system issue.

the server is not backed up by default. this you should configure yourself. you can backup the clients on a share or create disk images by pxe-booting them and creating a backup.

Fifth, since I'm using flash drives for my primary OS drive, is swap necessary?

yes it is (very much) recommended, the type of drive doesn't really matter, it's just that if the OS runs out of memory it can swap out. however with your amount of memory and Amahi's requirements I don't think you'll hit the roof any time soon so I'd recommend using 1 or 2 GB as swap.

1. LVM, I thought it wasn't recommended for Amahi? How would I set that up?
3. Yeah they would be for "real" backups. Hmm since I have 4+TB of data is it possible to easily spread, with syncing that across HDs instead of a Raid array?
4. Do you know of a method to backup the server, setting it up?
5. Thanks for answer my questions, I really appreciate it.

[moredruid]

I don't see why LVM wouldn't be recommended other than its complexity (at first glance). In a default install without extra's Fedora will setup your config with LVM.
There's 1 bug though: since LVM basically creates a layer over the hardware and the Amahi monitoring currently doesn't look for physical devices only you get a temperature read out error for the LV in the hda/setup page.

for the backup: use RAID5 for that array, if a disk fails you can at least rebuild (provided your replacement disk is at least the same size). though I still think the offsite rsync option is safer. Once you have the initial sync done (with lots of data this will take some serious time) rsync will only sync the changed files so bandwidth is a bit of a moot point unless you work with lots of new large files.

http://www.sanitarium.net/golug/rsync_backups.html
http://linux.com/news/enterprise/storag ... with-rsync

some tutorials for rsync... shouldn't be too hard.

[felipeds]

Well I've given up for now. I've spent the last 4 days on and off trying to get this installation working. I actually did get Amahi up and running but when I went to add my raid array to /var/hda/files I got errors on bootup (something about corrupted disks). Until fedora is easier to use (setting up LVM after install), or there's a more automated install I'm setting this aside.

I had to setup LVM after the install because fedora won't boot off of a USB CD-rom drive. So I had to physically attached my drive to the computer, which takes the place of an HD. Ubuntu works find booting off of the usb cd-rom.

[cpg]

sorry to hear. if you can work on ubuntu, it'd be great to help speeding up the port of Amahi.