LVM and NFS mounts

[gaf-mNDKBlG2WHs at public.gmane.org (Jerry Feldman)]

On 04/15/2009 11:13 AM, David Rosenstrauch wrote:
> Jerry Feldman wrote:
>  =20
>> On 04/15/2009 08:01 AM, Stephen Goldman wrote:
>>    =20
>>> Hello Blu,
>>>     Looking for some discussion points on whether exporting LVM=20
>>> volumes as NFS mount points is recommended or not .
>>> I am interested in hearing experiences of others. OS is RHEL 5.3
>>>  =20
>>>      =20
>> Our whole system at work is LVM and NFS (using automount). I don't thi=
nk=20
>> we could operate without using LVM. When we upgraded to RHEL 5.2, we=20
>> reorganized to set up the system physical drive as a single Physical=20
>> volume, and the remainder of the drives as another physical volume wit=
h=20
>> a number of logical volumes. FWIW, I think that LVM provides a=20
>> tremendous amount of flexibility with little risk.
>>    =20
>
> Getting off the topic of LVM+NFS a bit here, but I've heard that a setu=
p=20
> like that (i.e., a logical volume that spans multiple physical drives) =

> can actually get you into trouble.  I can't recall the exact specifics,=
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> but the gist was that if one of the physical drives dies or gets=20
> corrupted, LVM can get pretty hosed trying to serve up the data on the =

> LV.  Old wives' tale?
>  =20
Unfortunately, we could not do RAID1 here although it would be a better=20
situation.  Fortunately a lot of the volume is replicated from Toronto,=20
and we do a nightly local backup to another system as well as a tape=20
backup to New York. We don't have any 24x7 mission critical data.  While =

all of our drives are hot-swap removable SCSI, that limits my drive size =

to 300GB, and the total number of drives to 10, but we have a bunch of=20
72GB drives. I'd like to upgrade the whole system to 300GB, and possibly =

use RAID1, but a better solution might be to have a dedicated SATA disk=20
storage solution where I could have larger capacity drives at a lower=20
cost and do at least a RAID1. The other issue here is that we are pretty =

much independent of the rest of the company so that we are free to do=20
our own thing.  even before the economic issues, it's been a bit of a=20
struggle to buy the larger drives as we are technically not supposed to=20
have much of the systems we have.=20

--=20
Jerry Feldman <gaf-mNDKBlG2WHs at public.gmane.org>
Boston Linux and Unix
PGP key id: 537C5846
PGP Key fingerprint: 3D1B 8377 A3C0 A5F2 ECBB  CA3B 4607 4319 537C 5846