Re: How should I divvy up my HDDs? Suggestions Please.

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Date: Thu, 05 May 2005 17:14:16 +0100
To: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org

Hi Henry, thanks for your advice.

> It occurs to me that you are on the wrong track asking here. Ask
> people who run a forum about as big as you think yours can get how big
> the database is, and how big the templates are. If their database is
> 150Gb, then you should dedicate one disk for database (that is
> /var/db/postgressql is a separate partition that takes the entire 200Gb
> Disk), than start saving for a RAID system to replace that disk because
> it will fill up!

Well, most of the forum admins who are active in the forum-management
forums seem to use Linux. I've had my own experience of RedHat kernal
Hell, so, I'm opting for FreeBSD because I have a hunch that it will be
more reliable and easier to scale as my business expands.

Although, yes, they have more experience running forums, I figured that
it would be better to get FreeBSD-specific advice here.

> Well you can place databases anywhere you want. If they are very big
> you would want a external RAID to place them on, though that is
> overkill for most forums. However make sure you make /var a big
> partition if you place them there. You are right that the database
> will be far more space than the templates.

At the moment an external RAID is way, way beyond my means, that's
something I might graduate to if these forums of mine take off!

> Although in general splitting swap is a good idea, I wouldn't. By
> putting swap all on one disk, and the web pages on the other you can
> split the load a little (with 2GB of RAM you shouldn't be swapping
> much anyway) There might be other ways to split the load.

That's a REALLY interesting take on Swap.

How would this work out for load balance: /, /tmp and 8gb of Swap all on
the 80GB, while I put /home, /usr and my massive /var on the 200GB?
Or should I shift /home or /usr over to the first HDD too?

> This assumes that you won't have many local users, you are not also
> running as a fileserver, and your few local users won't have big files
> around.

Yeah, that's correct.

> Yes it is difficult to change partitions latter. you have to backup
> everything, change, re-install, then restore. Lots of down time.

Hmm, that makes me wonder if it might not make sense to follow Greg
Lehey's suggestion and lump the web pages into /var alongside the
database data. That way, I can create one big partition and not have to
guesstimate how much space either type of data will require.

Then again, I'd lose the ability to chroot and/or jail the web server as
you suggested.

Hmmm, decisions, decisions!!

Donnacha

Henry Miller wrote:
> On 5/5/2005 at 14:25 freebsd.org@donnacha.com wrote:
>
>
>>Jerry, thanks for your advice!
>>
>>
>>>If all your accounts and web pages
>>>are really in /home and you have no databases, I would be inclined
>>>to put both /usr and /var in the 80GB drive and leave the other one
>>>for home directories and web pages.
>>
>>In The Complete FreeBSD, Greg Lehey suggests that it's a good idea to
>>place web pages in /var, I don't quite grasp why. Do you think it
>
> would
>
>>be a better idea to stick with the standard and leave web pages in
>
> /home?
>
> If you web pages are all in one location you can chroot and/or jail the
> web server, which increases security.
>
>
>>As for databases, I'll have a lot of MySQL DBs and possibly, at a
>
> later
>
>>date, Postgresql. I'm hoping to specialize in forum-based web-sites
>
> and
>
>>Web apps generally. As I understand it, forum content is actually
>>stored in the DB and pulled dynamically via PHP, meaning, I think,
>
> that
>
>>the DB of each forum will take up a lot more space that the templated
>>PHP pages that make up the "site" part of the equation. I could be
>>wrong about that.
>
>
> Well you can place databases anywhere you want. If they are very big
> you would want a external RAID to place them on, though that is
> overkill for most forums. However make sure you make /var a big
> partition if you place them there. You are right that the database
> will be far more space than the templates.
>
>
>>What about /tmp? Looking through this list's archives, I read that
>
> it's
>
>>considered more secure to place /tmp on a seperate partition from /,
>>would it be even more secure to place it on a seperate HDD? How big
>>should /tmp be?
>
>
> Not really. The big advantage of separating things is /tmp is written
> fairly often, the rest of / is not. By putting /tmp on a different
> partition you make it less likely that the / filesystem gets corrupted
> if a reboot happens unexpectedly. Not as much of a problem now that
> we have softupdates, but even still you can limit the damage from
> crashes (including the power going out) by putting / elsewhere.
>
> Considering your usage, I would either make a big RAID-5 system (you
> need at least 3 physical disks of the same size for this), or place
> /var on a separate big disk entirely its own. reason: most of your
> disk access with be to /var (web pages and database)
>
> Although in general splitting swap is a good idea, I wouldn't. By
> putting swap all on one disk, and the web pages on the other you can
> split the load a little (with 2GB of RAM you shouldn't be swapping
> much anyway) There might be other ways to split the load.
>
> This assumes that you won't have many local users, you are not also
> running as a fileserver, and your few local users won't have big files
> around. If this is not true then you need a different partition
> scheme.
>
> It occurs to me that you are on the wrong track asking here. Ask
> people who run a forum about as big as you think yours can get how big
> the database is, and how big the templates are. If their database is
> 150Gb, then you should dedicate one disk for database (that is
> /var/db/postgressql is a separate partition that takes the entire 200Gb
> Disk), than start saving for a RAID system to replace that disk because
> it will fill up!
>
> Only you can guess how things will happen on this system, so you have
> to decide for yourself how to do thing.
>
>
>>Here's a pretty stupid question I have, apologies for my lack of clue:
>
>
>>do I have to define the size of each partition? Is it difficult to
>>change them at a later date? I'll only have command-line access.
>
>
> Yes it is difficult to change partitions latter. you have to backup
> everything, change, re-install, then restore. Lots of down time.
>
>
>

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• Previous message: Ed Stover: "Re: dynamically limit ip connections to ports over time?"
• Maybe in reply to: freebsd.org_at_donnacha.com: "How should I divvy up my HDDs? Suggestions Please."
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