From owner-freebsd-stable@FreeBSD.ORG Sun Jun 14 22:07:50 2009 Return-Path: Delivered-To: freebsd-stable@freebsd.org Received: from mx1.freebsd.org (mx1.freebsd.org [IPv6:2001:4f8:fff6::34]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 090231065670 for ; Sun, 14 Jun 2009 22:07:50 +0000 (UTC) (envelope-from alson+ml@alm.flutnet.org) Received: from tafi.alm.flutnet.org (tafi.dsl.alm.flutnet.org [145.99.245.99]) by mx1.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id B46418FC18 for ; Sun, 14 Jun 2009 22:07:49 +0000 (UTC) (envelope-from alson+ml@alm.flutnet.org) Received: from localhost (localhost [127.0.0.1]) by tafi.alm.flutnet.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 6AECA78C23 for ; Sun, 14 Jun 2009 23:51:46 +0200 (CEST) X-Virus-Scanned: amavisd-new at alm.flutnet.org Received: from tafi.alm.flutnet.org ([127.0.0.1]) by localhost (tafi.alm.flutnet.org [127.0.0.1]) (amavisd-new, port 10024) with ESMTP id 3KONy8DWMjIQ for ; Sun, 14 Jun 2009 23:51:42 +0200 (CEST) Received: by tafi.alm.flutnet.org (Postfix, from userid 1000) id 62C6878C1F; Sun, 14 Jun 2009 23:51:42 +0200 (CEST) Date: Sun, 14 Jun 2009 23:51:42 +0200 From: Alson van der Meulen To: freebsd-stable@freebsd.org Message-ID: <20090614215142.GA32937@tafi.alm.flutnet.org> Mail-Followup-To: freebsd-stable@freebsd.org References: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Disposition: inline In-Reply-To: User-Agent: Mutt/1.5.19 (2009-01-05) Subject: Re: Does this disk/filesystem layout look sane to you? X-BeenThere: freebsd-stable@freebsd.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.5 Precedence: list List-Id: Production branch of FreeBSD source code List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , X-List-Received-Date: Sun, 14 Jun 2009 22:07:50 -0000 * Dan Naumov [2009-06-14 18:17]: > I just wanted to have an extra pair (or a dozen) of eyes look this > configuration over before I commit to it (tested it in VMWare just in > case, it works, so I am considering doing this on real hardware soon). > I drew a nice diagram: http://www.pastebin.ca/1460089 Looks fine to me. Note that your swap doesn't have any redundancy, so if you lose a disk, the kernel will likely panic as soon as it hits any swap (the swap space is striped across the disks), this is something you can easily test in a VM. The kernel will only use four swap devices by default. I would put the swap on gmirror. Swap performance is rarely critical (if you're hitting swap often you should buy more RAM), and if you have 2TB disks, a few extra gigabytes less is not an issue (I usually make swap slightly larger than RAM for crash dumps, sometimes twice that if I plan to add RAM later). > Is there any actual downside to having a 5-way mirror vs a 2-way or a 3-way one? Write performance is slightly slower than a single disk (you have to wait for all five disks to finish), but these partitions are rarely performance-critical. Depending on your workload, it may be an issue for /var (databases, logs, mail), but you could always move that data to a ZFS filesystem. It should be fine for a file server. Any other solution would just add more complexity. Alson