[Beowulf] Re: RAID for home beowulf

[Chris Samuel]

----- "Tomislav Maric" <tomislav.maric at gmx.com> wrote:

> Well, I don't need too much scratch space, the important part of the
> disk is the /home with the results. What file system should I use for
> it, ext3?

A couple of things to bear in mind..

1) If you are using LVM on top of RAID you will need
to tell the mkfs command how your RAID is constructed
to get optimal performance (though LVM seems to impose
a penalty in its own right).

2) If you are using XFS directly on top of an MD partition
it should be able to learn the layout automagically and it'll
be good.   If you're using ext3/ext4 (and presumably others)
then you'll need to again specify the layout for best perf.

3) Be aware that the kernel you are using will make a big
difference and that the semantics for ext3 have changed
a while ago so that it no longer uses data=ordered but
instead uses data=writeback by default (you can override
that in your /etc/fstab or your kernel config if you
want).

cheers,
Chris
-- 
Christopher Samuel - (03) 9925 4751 - Systems Manager
 The Victorian Partnership for Advanced Computing
 P.O. Box 201, Carlton South, VIC 3053, Australia
VPAC is a not-for-profit Registered Research Agency