Hello Olaf, On 25-Feb-00, you wrote:
OM> Dear all, OM> OM> Now that I've got two brand new external SCSI drives to play with I OM> am rethinking my system set-up. If you have got some advice, I'd OM> love to hear it. Here is the scoop. OM> OM> The system in question is an IBM PC 300PL with an internal 8.3GB IDE OM> drive and 2 external SCSI drives (20GB and 27GB). It also has an MO OM> drive and CDRW connected to it. General rules: Put the swap, s/w and data on different spindles. Put database journals/logs on different spindles to the databases. Consider mirroring on different spindles for s/w and 'flat' data partitions. Splitting swap, s/w and data across different spindles will give a performance benefit. Splitting databases and journals across different spindles gives recovery. Mirroring across different spindles gives resilience, but if done in s/w results in a performance loss. Think about what data you are dealing with and try to balance/reconcile the above, then leave yourself enough scratch space so that you can reorganise it all again in the light of experience. Set up at least two installations of each version of Linux that you run i.e. stable & unstable (three is better - total six - your system should never be down and you can be right up to date ;-/ ;-)) - you can update one and test it, and if there are problems, you can boot a back-up/fall-back system. If you have frequently used CDs, put them on HD, in 'scratch' space. Depending on your data, and MO capacity, archive to these devices. The RW capability of CDRW can be a 'double edged blade' - I wouldn't want to RW it too many times, but it's ok for getting it wrong a few times. Consider putting the SCSI HDs on separate controllers - performance+, Resilience+- not h/w mirroring though :-(. If I were running journalised databases, I would put duplicate Linux & s/w partitions on each of the SCSI HDs with corresponding swap partitions on the 'other/opposite' HD. I would put db journals/logs/db backups on the internal HD. I wouldn't mirror the system, s/w & db partitions but would update the second db from the journal/log from the first (dirty fingers bit). If I were setting up a workstation I would put the swap and backups on the internal HD and mirror everything else - it would be worth getting a second controller - still not h/w mirroring though :-(. And then, in the light of experience, I'd probably 'revise' it ;-) Summary: multi-spindle disk systems can give benefits in: 1. Performance. 2. Recovery (in the event of h/w, s/w & user errors) 3. Resilience (in the event of h/w failure) Unless you have 50GB+ of data, you should be able to archive at least two out of three of these. Bye, LeeE -- http://www.spatial.freeserve.co.uk ...or something.
