topic Re: Guidance on root drive lvols sizing in Operating System - HP-UX

Guidance on root drive lvols sizing

Brando Sumayao — Fri, 09 Nov 2001 17:56:20 GMT

Hi,

Wanted to get some guidance on sizing on the system disk. What would be the recommended sizes for the ff lvols:

/
/home
/opt
/stand
/tmp
/usr
/var

The reason why I am getting some guidance was that I set /stand at at really low level the last time (based on an Oracle doc that said 32mb for /stand for 8.1.7 was ok -- should have known better), and I got burned for it as I really could not extend /stand and the recourse was to reload the O/S (plus I did not have ignite server loaded anyway).

So, before I re-install the O/S (11.11), I will make sure to load ignite-ux plus I want to make sure that the sizing on my system disk it correct.

Otehr items of note is that my system disk is 4.1gb in size and I am planning to mirror the system disk as well once I have it set-up.

Any assistance on this would be greatly appreciated and thanks ...

Brando

Re: Guidance on root drive lvols sizing

Bill McNAMARA_1 — Fri, 09 Nov 2001 18:04:32 GMT

root:pereal:/ > bdf
Filesystem kbytes used avail %used Mounted on
/dev/vg00/lvol3 143360 29707 106566 22% /
/dev/vg00/lvol1 83733 30461 44898 40% /stand
/dev/vg00/lvol7 2048000 567970 1387561 29% /usr
/dev/vg00/lvol8 6144000 2098252 3798411 36% /var
/dev/vg00/lvol4 409600 51106 336343 13% /tmp
/dev/vg00/lvol6 2048000 944397 1034636 48% /opt
/dev/vg00/lvol5 20480 1146 18128 6% /home

does me fine.. /home is real small, but no users use this A500.

I set the same up on L2ks.
Disks are 8-9GB and I leave a bit free to play around.

one disk vg00. swapmem on 1GB lvol2

Later,
Bill

Re: Guidance on root drive lvols sizing

Bill McNAMARA_1 — Fri, 09 Nov 2001 18:06:50 GMT

sorry actually that was my ignite server with a massive (relatively /var)

kibo:root> bdf
Filesystem kbytes used avail %used Mounted on
/dev/vg00/lvol3 143360 26162 109907 19% /
/dev/vg00/lvol1 83733 29196 46163 39% /stand
/dev/vg00/lvol8 1740800 503308 1160656 30% /var
/dev/vg00/lvol7 2048000 545155 1408936 28% /usr
/dev/vg00/lvol4 512000 1551 478614 0% /tmp
/dev/vg00/lvol6 2048000 907760 1068991 46% /opt
/dev/vg00/lvol5 40960 1301 37244 3% /home

Watch out for primary swap.
Don't go more than 512M with you 4.2G drive...

Later,
Bill

Re: Guidance on root drive lvols sizing

Sanjay_6 — Fri, 09 Nov 2001 18:07:50 GMT

Hi Brando,

Take a look at the thread below,

http://docs.hp.com/cgi-bin/fsearch/framedisplay?top=/hpux/onlinedocs/5971-0642/5971-0642_top.html&con=/hpux/onlinedocs/5971-0642/00/00/19-con.html&toc=/hpux/onlinedocs/5971-0642/00/00/19-toc.html&searchterms=system%20requirement&queryid=20011109-101103

Hope this helps.

Regds

Re: Guidance on root drive lvols sizing

Bernie Vande Griend — Fri, 09 Nov 2001 18:09:01 GMT

Most people will say "it depends". And it does, especially for /var, /tmp, /opt, and /home. For those two it really does depend on what your users are doing and how much logging, printing, patching, etc you will be doing.
For / and /stand, I set them a bit higher than what is really needed just to avoid future problems. Here are my "standard" settings which I tweak as necessary:
/=100 MB
/stand=100 MB
/usr=1GB
/var=1Gb
/opt=500GB
/home=200MB
/tmp=200MB

I would just say that for /, /stand, /usr, /var, and /tmp that I wouldn't set them much lower than the above, in fact with a 9Gb drive I make them a bit larger.

Re: Guidance on root drive lvols sizing

Volker Borowski — Fri, 09 Nov 2001 18:14:10 GMT

Hmm,
you did not say how much memory you have, and how many useres in /home you need to support.
Adjust the values below acordingly.

/ = 200M (like to have spare place)
-> like to keep /stand as a directory below this

pri swap 2 x phys. mem (max 512M)

/home 50M
-> put on vg01 if big

/var 500M
-> may be /var/adm/sw to seperate fs
-> may be bigger if printserver

/tmp 500M

/opt, /usr depends on what you want to put there as well.

Remember not only to mirror the disk, but to make it bootable as well !

Just my 0.02???
Volker

Re: Guidance on root drive lvols sizing

Bill McNAMARA_1 — Fri, 09 Nov 2001 18:19:37 GMT

Hey bernie, /opt=500GB is a bit big huh?!

Later,
Bill

Re: Guidance on root drive lvols sizing

Timothy Czarnik — Fri, 09 Nov 2001 18:21:32 GMT

Brando,

Good advice so far here. I am a strict believer in making /tmp large (at least 250MB, 500 MB if you can get it).

Much of the software out there, as well as patches, use /tmp as their default temporary working directory. When using Software Administrator, /tmp is used extensive to unshar depots and things of the such. I was hamstung awhile back with /tmp only having 50 MB free and having a patch that was larger than this. I couldn't unshar it.

Make /opt, /usr, /var, and /tmp much larger than you think you'll need.

-Tim

Re: Guidance on root drive lvols sizing

John Bolene — Fri, 09 Nov 2001 18:53:18 GMT

With not a lot of developers on a system I use
/ 500M
/stand 48M
/var 2G
/usr 1G
/tmp 100M
/opt 2G
/home 50M

On the developers machine

/ 500M
/stand 48M
/var 2G
/usr 1G
/tmp 500M
/opt 2G
/home 2G
/stuff 4G

stuff is the place where they can put anything that they want to stay for awhile, more like a permanent /tmp

Re: Guidance on root drive lvols sizing

David Lodge — Sun, 11 Nov 2001 14:27:25 GMT

A quick rule of thumb that I follow:
Always size in multiples of 100Mbytes (it occasionally breaks but its better to have too much space!)

Out of general:
/ - 100 (this should *never* increase!)
/stand - 100
/var - 512 (with a seperate 700Mbyte volume for /var/adm/sw, and maybe a seperate one for /var/tmp)
/usr - 512
/tmp - 100 (Users should user /var/tmp anyway)
/home - 100 (To stop users whining - though they shouldn't be using this anyway!)
swap - memory size

Out of which of the above you can resize without single user/maintenance mode AFAIK /home is about the only one!

dav

Re: Guidance on root drive lvols sizing

harry d brown jr — Sun, 11 Nov 2001 21:00:41 GMT

brando,

How much memory do you have, because you will need to create a swap and mirror this also?

I agree that /tmp should be at least 250mb, /stand 100mb, and swap 2-2.5 x memory.

Also, why mirror /home when you can place it elsewhere, like on vg01?

live free or die
harry

Re: Guidance on root drive lvols sizing

Michael Tully — Sun, 11 Nov 2001 22:14:38 GMT

Hi,

We use this as a default size on our production
servers, as they generally run the same type
of applications. Where possible make sure you have plenty of room for /var and /tmp as these will always be an application dumping ground. Sizes *will* always depend on what you placing on the box and the type of box that it is.

$ bdf
Filesystem kbytes used avail %used Mounted on
/dev/vg00/lvol3 147456 26683 113273 19% /
/dev/vg00/lvol1 103637 36690 56583 39% /stand
/dev/vg00/lvol8 2097152 403215 1588862 20% /var
/dev/vg00/lvol7 1048576 312857 689745 31% /usr
/dev/vg00/lvol6 311296 267329 41284 87% /tmp
/dev/vg00/lvol5 1048576 209514 786672 21% /opt
/dev/vg00/lvol4 524288 1242 490360 0% /home

-Michael

Re: Guidance on root drive lvols sizing

harry d brown jr — Sun, 11 Nov 2001 22:25:41 GMT

The biggest problem is that he only has a 4gb disk.

live free or die
harry

Re: Guidance on root drive lvols sizing

Michael Tully — Mon, 12 Nov 2001 00:36:01 GMT

Geez Harry,

Your a hard marker on a Monday morning....
BTW don't you ever sleep?

-Michael

Re: Guidance on root drive lvols sizing

harry d brown jr — Mon, 12 Nov 2001 00:54:30 GMT

Michael,

It's still Sunday evening here. It's 7:58pm right now. I get a little sleep, I even went out last night and had a few wild turkeys and ginger ales.

live free or die
harry

Re: Guidance on root drive lvols sizing

David Allen — Mon, 12 Nov 2001 06:00:30 GMT

Hi Brando,

If you wish to get your configuration right, you will need to look at several factors. Certainly use the sizes already posted in this thread as a basis for your design decisions, but don't just accept a size for a filesystem because it has been suggested, try to look at what that filesystem will be used for in your environment.

Filesystems, such as, /var & /tmp can fill up very quickly. /var holds your O/S patches (/var/adm/sw), printer and mail spool area, system logs and by default is your crash dump area.

Depending on how much memory you have on your system will affect how much swap space you allocate. Also what type of applications/databases you run, how many users log on, etc, can affect how much swap is required (check with your DBAs/Developers). At the very least you will need to create a primary swap space equal to your memory. Secondary swap devices can be created on other disks. The recommendation for swap is 2 to 2.5 times memory. But this can be a problem if you have a Gig of memory (for example) and only 4GB of disk - doesn't leave much room for your other filesystems.

The /opt filesystem is typically used for HP applications, eg Glance, Ignite, etc. So if you intend to install additional products you will need to allow for enough space in /opt.

/ and /usr should remain fairly static, but make sure you allow enough free space for future patching. Sometimes Developers/DBAs like to put binaries into /usr, so check what their requirements are as well. So if you need to rob Peter to pay Paul, you could probably pinch disk space (prior to building) from these filesystems to add to the dynamic filesystems, such as /var.

If you are finding that you are really pushed for space, put /home on another disk, it is not a required part of the O/S.

Hope this helps,

Regards,
Dave

Re: Guidance on root drive lvols sizing

harry d brown jr — Mon, 12 Nov 2001 11:54:50 GMT

Brando,

Here is an 11i install with nothing extra put on it:

Filesystem kbytes used avail %used Mounted on
/dev/vg00/lvol3 143360 55787 82144 40% /
/dev/vg00/lvol1 111637 35428 65045 35% /stand
/dev/vg00/lvol15 512000 172418 318400 35% /var
/dev/vg00/lvol13 2048000 124117 1803719 6% /var/opt
/dev/vg00/lvol11 1536000 771718 716519 52% /usr
/dev/vg00/lvol10 65536 45326 19009 70% /tmp
/dev/vg00/lvol5 1536000 1057065 449015 70% /opt
/dev/vg00/lvol14 20480 1114 18162 6% /home

live free or die
harry