I am setting up a new machine which has hardware RAID (ServeRAID 5014) with 8 x 1TB drives. I am minded to set up the RAID array as one big drive with 7 disks and one hot spare as a means of getting the best use of the capacity with some safety built in. Not yet sure whether it should be raid 5 or raid 6 but the concept for use is the same.
Still not planned the volume configuration but it will probably be very simple; root, home, swap, data and UEFI? if this is required, with most of the capacity assigned to data volume which I can play with later but will be used for video & audio media.
What is best file system for this, should I create primary & secondary partitions or use volumes. Showing my ignorance here so before setting all this in motion, which takes a while, I would appreciate views on this approach and advice on best way to proceed.
Budgie2
Do you have BIOS or UEFI system?
The system has UEFI and when I tried an installation of 13.2 on a simple drive, before I had RAID set up it went well and gave me a secure boot installation.
Hope this helps.
Budgie2
Ok confused about your exact set up I know you intend to implement a huge array but not sure where you plan to park the OS. The control appears to be a true hardware RAID card not a FAKE RAID card which are very common. As a true Hardware array the array should present itself to the OS as just another drive. Exact partitioning is dependent on your over all usage you plan. At minimum you want a swap and root partition. We always recommend a separate home partition and possibly a data partition if you do large database processing. Generally it is best to put you data on a partition separate from root. This allows easier updates of OS and changes with minimum disturbing of your data. Which file system is really up to you there is not up or down for a given file system on RAID
Hi and thanks for the reply. In fact it all went very smoothly and much easier than on earlier versions. I now have RAID 5 on 7 drives with one more drive as hot spare. Volume set up was straight forward with swap, root, home and UEFI all as proposed by installation without any intervention from me except, pending further investigation, I have reduce the size of /home volume so I can create a multimedia volume using approx 80% of total capacity.
My remaining query concerns which OS version next? I have used 13.2 for now because I am more familiar with it. Can I and should I now upgrade or wait a few more months and can I do it as an upgrade or do I have to do a new install?
Budgie2
If you use a serious system wait a while before leaping to leap 13.2 has a year of updates still. If you are playing then Leap is fine