[Sussex] BIG disks....

[John Crowhurst]

> Sorry if this is a dumb question.
>
> I have (maybe) a requirement to create a single big (a few Tb) "virtual
> disk".
>
> This will be, for various reasons, based around outboard FireWire2 hard
> disks, possibly using 1.6Tb drives, but more likely using 1Tb drives.
>
> The question is one of disk management.
>
> In the past, when I've had multiple physical disk drives on a server, I've
> given each a mount point. What I'm really after is something that
> functions as a hot-configurable controller, so that I can add extra drives
> to the pool, and have them function as if they were a single drive....

You probably want to look at a RAID solution, where the drives are striped
together into one virtual partition.

You can create a linear partition, where two (or more) drive partitions
are joined to create one large one.

The Software-RAID HOWTO shows you how to setup and implement Linear and
other RAID configurations using md, here:

http://unthought.net/Software-RAID.HOWTO/

> Possible? Easy? Pointers?

Creating Software RAID configurations are very easy, and just involve
changes to the /etc/raidtab and the right tools to implement it.

-- 
John