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Date:      Thu, 09 Nov 2006 17:26:38 +0000
From:      Alex Zbyslaw <xfb52@dial.pipex.com>
To:        VeeJay <maanjee@gmail.com>
Cc:        Jerry McAllister <jerrymc@msu.edu>, freebsd-questions@freebsd.org
Subject:   Re: HELP! Installation Questions
Message-ID:  <455364CE.9080100@dial.pipex.com>
In-Reply-To: <20061109155632.GA82382@gizmo.acns.msu.edu>
References:  <2cd0a0da0611082139g7a529a61x76db1c52638fdec9@mail.gmail.com> <20061109155632.GA82382@gizmo.acns.msu.edu>

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Jerry McAllister wrote:

>On Thu, Nov 09, 2006 at 06:39:50AM +0100, VeeJay wrote:
>
>>.Ideal Space required for MySQL DBs: 140GB.
>>(Contents: Many MySQL databases backing name based virtual websites)
>>
>>.Ideal Space required for Virtual Hosted Websites: 140GB
>>(Contents: HTML, PHP, Images, Mail, Logs, Sites Backups, etc)
>>
>>Maximum space required for SWAP to get high performance.
>>    
>>
If you end up using swap space you will *not* get performance.  The 
second you start swapping is the second that your performance goes into 
a downward spiral, especially with multi-user servers.  If 4Gb of main 
memory won't cover your needs then get more memory (and go for 64-bit), 
or look at using two or more servers.  Swap space is for emergencies - 
unexpected, infrequent memory load peaks - and if your server starts 
using it regularly, it's overwhelmed.

>databases tend to be put in /var/db  by default, so if you must
>have 140 GB database size, then you need a /var of more than 140 GB.
>
Note that Linux (at least newer RedHat) would also tend to put the 
virtual host space on /var as well.  IMHO, both these ideas are complete 
crocks.

/var is for *system* variable data - package databases, log files, pid 
files and all kinds of other *trashable* data.  (Yes, mail is an obvious 
exception but if you do serious mail you put it on a separate partition 
anyway, or use maildir or...).

Mixing up application/user data with /var just makes for 
unmaintainability somewhere down the line.

>An easier, or at least more flexible way to deal with it is to get
>a very large second disk - about 340 GB - and make one big file
>system on it.
>
It is much better to keep both your application requirements together, 
as suggested here.  There is nothing to stop you using one disk (or RAID 
array) but just make sure that your application data is in a separate 
tree (such as /home) which, personally, I would always put on a separate 
partition.  For optimum performance, though, you might want one 
disk/RAID for the OS and one disk/RAID for the applications.

--Alex





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