[Gllug] To partition or not to partition

[Nix]

On 13 Oct 2010, Bruce Richardson verbalised:

>
> On Wed, Oct 13, 2010 at 08:16:55AM +0100, Nix wrote:
>> > But without LVM, how do you achieve the luxury of having as many swap
>> > partitions as you want, whenever you want them?
>> 
>> You don't need that. Swap files are exactly as fast (unless you are
>> severely fragmented) and more convenient for ad-hoc addition.
>
> Yes, but then you're just shifting the problem, because you're limited
> to the space available in some existing partition.  Since I don't put /
> on LVM, it makes sense for swap to go there.

True. If you've got extra space and you can't think what to do with it,
by all means leave it empty and expand an LV into it later: but if
you've already done that for some transient use of space and now you
need to reuse it for swap, well, online filesystem shrinkage isn't
implemented yet.

>> > I used to work with a blithely unthinking clown who would set up LVM on
>> > every server he configured - and then allocate *all* the space on the
>> > VG, right from the start.  Point <-----  ----->>>> Him.
>> 
>> Well, I actually do something like that on most of the systems I go near
>> (one VG per cluster of disks that can fail as a unit is my general rule,
>> so I'll never get one failing because some of its PVs have died while
>> others work, then LVM across them).
>
> That would be a coherent strategy; he was just doing this with
> non-raided local disks.  No gain at all.

A significant reliability loss, if that was disks plural.
-- 
Gllug mailing list  -  Gllug at gllug.org.uk
http://lists.gllug.org.uk/mailman/listinfo/gllug