Deploying Suse Linux Enterprise Server
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Installing Suse Linux Enterprise Server
Putting it all together
I covered quite a bit of information on the options available when configuring the disk subsystem of your server. So, to finish this section off, I am quickly going to step through a "typical" setup for a basic file server. This setup will use software RAID arrays along with LVM to ensure the server will maintain data integrity, as well as have the ability to be re-configurable to handle any needs for future data storage. Remember this is only a recommended baseline system, your setup may require something entirely different.
The first thing you must do is to partition all of the drives within your computer. Normally when I use a Software RAID array I always create a 300MB Linux RAID partition on all the drives, which will be added to a RAID Level 1 array (mirrored array). This 300MB array will become the "/boot" mount which holds the current kernel and initial ram disk for the system. You can probably reduce this to 100MB, but I use 300MB on the off-chance that the system may be used as a Xen Virtual Machine base in the future.
Example Disk Setup for Standard Servers
Next, you will want to create a way to handle swap space for the server. I usually handle this similar to how I handle the "/boot" mount. I simply add a 2GB partition to every drive within the array, these partitions are again added to a RAID level 1 array (mirrored array), which is then specified as swap space. When you create the RAID array, it is highly recommended to set the Chunk size to 64KB since this size is optimal for swap space.
Note: When creating these first RAID level 1 arrays, you do not have to add all the partitions to the array. In fact it is recommended to keep at least one partition out of the array, which you can then later add to the array, which it would then become a "hot spare" for the array.
Since we have the "/boot" mount and the swap taken care of we are going to focus on the "/" root mount. There are two schools of thought here: One is to create a separate RAID level 5 array for the "/" root mount, then create additional arrays (or an LVM setup) for additional mounts. The other idea is to create a single RAID level 5 array, which would then be added to an LVM setup where you would create a "/" root logical volume. This second school of thought gives you the most flexibility, however you must ensure that the LVM code is included into the initial ram disk for your system. SLES does include LVM into the initrd, but if you are going to build your own kernel it is highly recommended that you do not include the "/" root mount within an LVM Volume Group (unless you compile the RAID and LVM code into your custom kernel).
So, if you are going to build your own Linux kernel, or if you feel uneasy about using a logical volume as the "/" root mount, go ahead and create a separate RAID level 5 array to hold the "/" root mount. This mount will probably only need to be 10GB or so (as long as you create separate mounts for "/home", "/srv", "/var", etc.) depending upon the function(s) of your server.
The remaining drive space should then be partitioned into a RAID level 5 array, which is then going to be configured as a LVM volume group. To do this, go ahead and create the RAID array as you normally would, however when it comes to the final step in creating the array, ensure that you select "do not format" and ensure that there is no mount point selected. This ensures that the array will be available to be added to a LVM volume group.
Once you create the RAID level 5 array, go ahead and launch the LVM wizard and add this array to the "system" volume group. Once the volume group is created, you can now create logical volumes for the important mount points for your server. The mount points to consider are:
/home- which holds all of your user's data/srv- which is usually used to store your network exports, your websites, ftp access, etc./var- which holds your imap email storage, samba profiles, dns chroot, log files, etc.
By putting these mount points within an LVM volume group, your system is now flexible enough to grow with your server needs. Each mount point will then be able to be resized as needed and if you run out of storage space, you can easily add another RAID level 5 array to the volume group for more storage without having to repartition or move your data around.
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