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I'm currently building a backup server for a few of the machines in the office. I plan to run ubuntu 10.04 LTS on it.

My current setup is:

2 x 1TB disks in software RAID 1 configuration

2 x 2TB disks in software RAID 1 configuration

My original idea had been to mount the filesystem on the 1TB Raid array and use the 2TB raid array for storage. However, this will leave a large chunk of the 1TB array unused and doesn't seem to be very efficient.

My question is, can I run LVM over the top of both arrays to arrive at a 3TB volume?

My fear with this is that I obviously need the volume to be bootable in case of a drive failing. Can anyone point me in the right direction and give some advice on whether it's possible, or any best-practice considerations? I'm a little overwhelmed with the information out there.

Thanks

Matt

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  • Matt, consider accepting the given answer if it helped you solve your issue.
    – vic
    Aug 18, 2016 at 19:26

1 Answer 1

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You can create several partitions on your first array. E.g. one for a system partition, one for a swap partition etc. and one partition for the LVM on the first array. On the second one you can create one big LVM partition or take the whole drive as a physical volume. Both LVM partitions (physical volumes) can then be combined into one LVM volume group.

The system partition is not affected by the LVM. I don't know much about software RAID configuration and how to boot from it. But the LVM is not a problem in that context because your system is on a normal partition.

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  • Thanks @bmk, that's a helpful start, I'll give that a go and let you know how I get on.
    – Matt
    Apr 2, 2011 at 9:07
  • That worked perfectly. 4 drives in 2xRaid 1 configurations, with LVM spanning some partitions between them. Also a breeze to set up with the Debian installer. Thanks for your help, bmk.
    – Matt
    Apr 4, 2011 at 11:24

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