[lug] Server Partitioning Recommendation

[karl horlen]

I'm getting ready to install a web/mail/dns server.

My system will have 2 x 160GB HDs.  

I'm wondering if anybody could offer up some
suggestions on the best partitioning scheme to use for
a similar setup?  

Or maybe it's better to ask the question this way:  

"If you were creating a mail/web/dns server and had 2
x 160 G HDs, how would you partition / configure
them?" 

I imagine many have done this before and discovered
that certain schemes work better than others after
experiencing crashes and making changes due to poor
capacity planning.  I've looked online and I haven't
found much in this regard. 

I'm leaning towards simplicity using ext3 fs and
creating less partitions versus more:

- one boot
- one swap
- one root (not sure what size to make it?)
- one data (planning on making it the max available
space left after all other partitions created)

That's pretty standard i think.  But it could be
modified a number of ways.

1) I'm not sure if I would benefit by carving the one
massive data partition up into multiple extended
partitions or not?

2) Or whether i should setup individual partitions for
httpd ServerRoot and Postfix Mail related "stuff".

3) Does anybody know what impact more versus less
partitions have on drive performance? 

My goal is to partition them in such a way that will :

A) allow easier and better data
backup/restore/recovery

B) help isolate the impacts of partition corruption.  

I'm thinking that more partitions helps in this case
but maybe not.  Maybe some have found through personal
experience, that drive failure is more common than
partition corruption.  I'd be curious to know.

C) Allow best performance

D) Allow disk capacitly/space to be added later
seamlessly.  

E) Allow me to make reconfiguring my partitions as
painless as possible in the future if I screw the
intial configuration up or didn't plan accordingly.

I know sw raid (probably mirroring 1)and LVM are going
to be a part of my configuration.  LVM in particular
will address D and E above.  I've been reading up on
both of these.  

But for this thread, I want to focus purely on the
partitioning scheme and leave the LVM and raid part
for another thread.

thanks



 
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