Recommendations for partitioning a mail server over RAID

[Quitch]

Yes, it's the old favourite, Linux partitions.

Back when I first discovered Linux I spent as much time piddling around with partition setups and various fstab flags as I did actually using the thing, but one thing I never had available to me when setting up a new system was RAID arrays. Now I work with servers and get to do it all again (but this time for real ), and due to the fact I'm inheriting this system the RAID arrays are already pre-determined, a RAID 1 array of two disks (duh) and a RAID 5 with four disks.

The question I have is how best to split a mail server on such a setup. On Windows I'd put the C partition on the first array and the D partition on the second array, and that'd be that. I don't know what best practice is for Linux in this situation though, should I be putting / on one and /home on another etc.?

Off the top of my head I think sendmail (though another MTA may be used) puts its queue under /var/... and therefore I'd want most of the setup on the first array and then /var on the second. Advice welcome! Big Grin

My gut tells me I should do the following:

RAID1 (72GB):

/boot
/
/swap
/usr

RAID5 (216GB):

/var
/home
/tmp

Unsure whether it's worse the hassle of spinning off /tmp into its own partition.

This is a gateway system processing incoming and outgoing mail, but not holding any mailboxes.

[anello]

I would keep it pretty simple.

It depends on your mailserver configuration. Where are the mails going to be? /var/mail or home???

I would put the whole linux install on the raid1 and put all the customer data on the raid5.
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Antonino Catinello | http://catinello.eu

[Quitch]

Actually, the MTA is undecided between PostFix and Exim at this point, but I assume the directories are fully configurable for both, so I might just be best having a /something and putting that as the sole partition on the RAID5 array?

[anello]

You may consider to put the whole /var on the raid5. It's sometimes useful to have all the log files and data on a different partition as the actual install. Assuming that you mails go to /var/mail or similar.

Have fun setting up your mailserver
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Antonino Catinello | http://catinello.eu

[nativemad]

Hi,

i don't think that it's a very good idea to put the whole var in one partition... If your logs are getting flooded, then the MTA has no space left for the mailqueue!

It also depends on the actual speed of the drives and the blocksize and so on, but i would guess that raid5 is faster than raid1, so put the "working" data there.

raid1
/boot
/

raid5
/tmp
/var
/var/log
/var/spool
swap

shure, you could also have a separate partition for /usr with special mount flags (ro for example), which i would place on the raid1.

good luck!
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Power to the people!