[PVE-User] Installations Feedback

[Martin Maurer]

Hi,

The installer handles only one disk respectively one raid array. A
recommended/good setup is a hardware raid 10. This gives best read/write
performance and reliability.
The installer configures LVM2 automatically in a way that you can do
snapshots with vzdump on this drive array.

Your Dell server: make sure you have a hardware raid controller (with
write cache enabled, batteries backup) and I suggest you configure a
raid 10 with 4 equal disks and install PVE on this raid array.
You can do a simple performance test of your hardware after
installation: just run "pveperf"(only when the server is idle)

Here is a sample output of pveperf of one of our test machines (Adaptec
RAID 3805 with write cache enabled/batteries backup and raid 10 - 4 x
500 GB WD5001ABYS):

____
proxmox-104 # pveperf
CPU BOGOMIPS:      17027.39
REGEX/SECOND:      701028
HD SIZE:           94.49 GB (/dev/pve/root)
BUFFERED READS:    201.88 MB/sec
AVERAGE SEEK TIME: 9.08 ms
FSYNCS/SECOND:     1108.96
DNS EXT:           14.86 ms
DNS INT:           0.84 ms (proxmox.com)
____

Most important figures: Seek time and Fsysnc/second

Currently Proxmox VE does not support several locations for the OpenVZ
containers (see /var/lib/vz) but this is on the roadmap.

If you want to change the LVM2 setup after installation, please refer to
the LVM2 documentation.
(to list the volumegroups: "lvdisplay")

Software RAID: 
we decided NOT to use software raid due to performance, reliability and
recovering issues.

Best Regards,

Martin Maurer

martin at proxmox.com
http://www.proxmox.com



> -----Original Message-----
> From: pve-user-bounces at pve.proxmox.com [mailto:pve-user-
> bounces at pve.proxmox.com] On Behalf Of ijez
> Sent: Thursday, May 08, 2008 8:34 AM
> To: pve-user at pve.proxmox.com
> Subject: [PVE-User] Installations Feedback
> 
> Hi,
> 
> Just try PVE on the Dell PowerEdge 2950 with 6 HDD ( 2x80GB, 4x1TB ),
> Quad Core Processor, 8GB RAM, on the installation, PVE ask me to
select
> the HDD to install and I select the first HDD then the installations
> start smoothly. Congratulations for the simple installations step :)
> 
> Now the problem, I'm not familiar with Debian, but in CentOS, at
> installations time, it will automatically select all the HDD, create
> the /boot partition with 100M space on the first HDD, do LVM partition
> on all available HDD it's detect ( with swap, /, and /home partitions
> ). It is possible for PVE to do automatic partition layout with all
> available HDD select?
> 
> So now, to workaround my problem, I would like to ask how could I add
> another 5 HDD ( if possible, setup RAID 1 ) into the fresh PVE
> installations ( I can see debian is detecting all the HDD on boot)? I
> would like to used it as a space for my openvz container.
> 
> I don't know if this is the right channel, but I would like to request
> a features that allow user to setup software RAID on installations
> time.
> 
> Thanks in advances for the very promising product.
> 
> Thanks and Regards,
> 
> 
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