RAID | LVM and an Apple ANS

[Alexander Holst]

Hi everybody,

First of all, sorry for the cross post, but I thought I'd get as many=20
ideas | solutions as possible, before I attempt to do anything.

My idea: I would like to use an Apple ANS as a small webserver for our=20=

university here. It will not see a lot of traffic, therefore the=20
hardware should handle it [ANS 700/200 with 2x Seagate 4GB OEM and 2x=20
IBM 4GB OEM, builtin dual wide SCSI controller] - we are on a thight=20
budget here and the machine is sitting in the corner right now.

Here my questions:

1]
I'd like to use a 100Mbs NIC, which NICs work right out of the box with=20=

YDL?

I've had bad experiances with Tulip based Asant=E9 NICs - they are=20
detected by YDL, even configurable with IP# and everything else, but no=20=

packets ever traverse to the LAN! The log reads something about an old=20=

style ROM, using alternate media info or such. Funny enough, I can ping=20=

the NIC, but nothing outside the box!

2]
The machine has no tape, but I'd like to have some redundancy. Therefore=20=

I thought about using all 4 drives in a RAID level 5  or RAID 0/1 setup.=20=

I read the Root RAID HowTo as well as the RAID HowTo, as well as the LVM=20=

HowTo from the LDP site. My wishes are: booting from RAID if possible!

a] RAID 0/1
Using two disks on two channels, striped [would result in ~ 8GB drive=20
space] and that mirrored to an identical setting.

or

b] RAID 5
Using all 4 drives in a level 5 setup, 2 drives per channel [would=20
result in ~ 12 GB drive space].

I am actually favouring version b]. Would I loose a lot of performance=20=

in comparison to a]?

3]
Now the tricky part, booting from that RAID, be it 2a] or 2b] - how=20
would I accomplish an install?

a]
Using an extra disk and install a minimal system, setup my RAID volumes,=20=

then copy the minimal system to the RAID and continue installation

or

b]
Is it possible to do an install directly onto a RAID volume

4]
Would LVM be of any help, like setting up a RAID 5, then use LVM to=20
populate it with logical volumes, so I can have a separate /var & /tmp=20=

partitions to avoid growing logfiles taking up too much space, leaving=20=

the machine useless? Or is a single partition installation safe these=20
days? I understand, that due to booting issues on the ANS, /boot has to=20=

be a separate partition on the ANS series. How could one establish=20
redundancy for that?

Any ideas / procedures appreciated.

Regards,
Alex



Alexander Holst
Pforzheim University of Applied Sciences
<holst@fh-pforzheim.de>
ph: +49 [0]7231 28-6837
fx: +49 [0]7231 28-6040