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Partition the Harddrives

Notes: 

• We assume 4 73G drives were configured into two logical drives using mirroring.
• Always use Ext 3 filesystem for all partitions, do not use Reisner which is a dead project (Ext3 is not a  default of Suse 10  SP2)
• Mark all partitions except swap with format options (unless this is a re-install)
• With Suse 10 SP2 you probably should always use LVM: it looks like there is no difference in stability and LVM provides additional flexibility.
• If you use SAN for data and local harddrives just for strong OS using LVM does not make much sense.

1. Create primary boot partition (200-300M). Type should be ext3.
2. Create primary swap partition. Recommended size of the swap is the size of the RAM if RAM is 4G or less and half of the size of the RAM after that (actually depends on applications you will be running, but in general too much swapping is bad).  See Linux swap
   • For most servers with over 4G memory this can be 1/2 of memory size. For example this is Oracle recommendation for application servers.
   • On special purpose small servers with 512 of RAM (if such exists those days) it probably should be equal to double of memory size as Suse has a memory footprint around 1G. Beagle and other memory hogs should be de-installed in this case. Smaller footprint X manager is recommended instead of this fat pig called Gnome.
3. It is desirable to install LVM for all other partitions as this makes installation more flexible.
4. /usr (4-6G) and /opt (4G ) can be merged with root partitio
5. Some examples of partitioning

Example 1: mirrored pair of 36 drives (no LVM)

Filesystem           1K-blocks      Used Available Use% Mounted on
/dev/sda5              4128320    338524   3580032   9% /
/dev/sda2               298471     16210    266850   6% /boot
/dev/sda10             5207780    737020   4206212  15% /home
/dev/sda8              4128320    735412   3183144  19% /opt
/dev/sda9              4128320    240456   3678100   7% /tmp
/dev/sda6              4128320   1851872   2066684  48% /usr
/dev/sda7              8256696    342928   7494288   5% /var

Example 2:  mirrored pair of 73G drives (with LVM)

Filesystem           1K-blocks      Used Available Use% Mounted on
/dev/mapper/vg01-root
                       4128448    304384   3614352   8% /
/dev/sda2               297485     16507    265618   6% /boot
/dev/mapper/vg01-home
                       1032088     77000    902660   8% /home
/dev/mapper/vg01-opt   2064208    633432   1325920  33% /opt
/dev/mapper/vg01-tmp   4128448    136468   3782268   4% /tmp
/dev/mapper/vg01-usr   4128448   1404892   2513844  36% /usr
/dev/mapper/vg01-var  10321208    917848   8879072  10% /var
/dev/mapper/vg02-backup
                      17546044   6162448  10492308  38% /backup
	

Partitioning of hard drives using LVM

We will assume the first part of drive is visible as sda.

First you need to switch to the advanced mode in YAST2 Partitioner. You will see that one partition is already created.

• sda1     Dell Util      31MB              0-3 # created in prev step

If there are extra partitions on the boot drive you need to delete them.

1. Create primary partition for /boot by entering +200M. Set the type of partition to Ext3 and check "format"

   sda2     /boot                200MB            4-29            (format ext3)

2. Create another primary partition for  swap by using swap partition code from the menu For example for 64G of RAM enter +32G, but for 8G RAM or less you probably can afford 8G swap. 
   
   sda3     swap                32GB               30-4207
    
3. Create extended partition for the rest of the drive

   sda4            Extended         (rest of disk)
    

4. Create LVM partition out of extended (select Linux LVM partition type and default size)

   sda5     LVM                103GB
    

5. Switch LVM view by clicking on LVM button and create volume group  vg01 (or vg00 if you wish) by clicking on Add group button at the top right part of the screen
    
6. Enroll extended partition into this volume by clicking "Add volume" while extended partition is highlighted
    
7. Within LVM create additional partitions. Use name of partitions for labels ( root for / partition). For example:

   vg00                                   103GB

   vg00    lv01            /                4GB

   vg00    lv02            /usr             8GB

   vg00    lv03            /var            12GB

   vg00    lv04            /opt             4GB

   vg00    lv05            /tmp             8GB

   vg00    lv06            /home            8GB

8. Recheck that all partitions you created are Ext3 based.
    
9. If you have the second pair of drives you can create logical volume vg02 for the second pair of drives  and repeat the same procedure for creating the necessary partitions on the second volume group

Notes:

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