On Sat, Jun 7, 2008 at 9:59 AM, Damon L. Chesser <
damon@damtek.com> wrote:
On Sat, 2008-06-07 at 08:27 -0400, Mag Gam wrote:
>
> I have a RAID controller with 256MB of on board cache and its
> connected to 12 500GB SATA disks. I am planning to create 2 RAID
> groups (6 disks each), but I don't know what is the optimal stripe
> size should be.
Are you going to use the RAID controller to make the raid (ie, they will
be hardware raid and the machine and the OS will not know of it)? If
so, I would go with the controller defaults with out overriding reasons
to change them. One such reason I can think of is an application such
as oracle which has very detailed instructions on what kind of
strip/raid you need for a particular use.
>
> Also, once I stripe on the RAID controller I am planning to use LVM.
> Is striping a good idea?
This, I don't know.
> What should I consider for the filesystem?
Again, it depends on your use. Lots of real big files, you might want
something besides ext3. Lots of little or just "normal" files, ext3
should work just fine for you. There are some file system "experts" on
this list that can fill in the details. As a disclaimer, I have only
used ext3 and have never had to use anything different. But again, your
"Killer app" might have very specific requirements (again, oracle is
very specific in it's recommendations and I assume any good app will
tell you the optimum set up for it's self) however here are some things
to read to fill in the time for you :)
http://fsbench.netnation.com/ <--Performance comparison: Linux
filesystems.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_file_systems
http://linuxreviews.org/sysadmin/filesystems
http://www.linfo.org/filesystem.html
No matter what FS you choose, I would NOT deviate from having a /boot in
ext3. The filesystem has very good recovery tools and is well
documented. I might also not use anything but ext3 for the / as well
and put /kill_app on the optimal type of fs for it's self. If XFS is
the best for your app, having /boot and / in ext3 will not affect the
app. This might be a prejudice I have since I am very comfortable
working in ext3 and not so in say, Reisers, especially in file recovery
operations or resizing.
HTH
--
Damon L. Chesser
damon@damtek.com
http://www.linkedin.com/in/dchesser