Mateusz,
Date: Tue, 10 Jul 2012 11:52:51 +0200 From: Mateusz Marzantowicz mmarzantowicz@osdf.com.pl To: users@lists.fedoraproject.org Subject: Re: Production server running from USB stilck with /var on HD ? Message-ID: 4FFBFB73.7070803@osdf.com.pl Content-Type: text/plain; charset=UTF-8
On 10.07.2012 06:07, Philip Rhoades wrote:
People,
I have been using RH and Fedora since the beginning and love it! I like to keep up with the latest version of Fedora on my production server and although the install of the OS itself from a LiveCD/USB is very fast, restoring all the other stuff takes quite a while. To reduce downtime of the server, what I did last time was to install to a virtual machine which used a physical HD and then to reboot on the new HD when it was ready to go. Now I am thinking of installing to a USB stick but having all the changeable files on /var (or anywhwere else) symlinked to a dir on the HD for speed. What are the potential problems with this idea?
There are no potential problems when you install whole system to USB stick or other flash card. You can then use your HD for data only.
OK.
There is one thing you should consider before doing what you asked for. USB is slow! Slower then SAS or SATA. You would hardly see any performance gains in boot up speed then. Additionally in "real" servers a lot of time is spent on BIOS related procedures and with USB card you must wait as well.
So even putting /var on the hard disk would not help much?
You should probably assemble a little cluster and then use kvm for virtualization. It's very speed efficient to reboot virtual machines.
I did think of that but that does not resolve all the problems - it allows me to create a new (virtual) server quickly and swap it in when it is ready to go - so there is not much downtime BUT then the underlying OS doesn't get updated . . and I still have the same problem to update that. I have been thinking about using a SSD for the OS but it would be nice to be able to plug in a new drive without taking the box apart - I suppose I could look for plug-n-play SSD that can be inserted into a drive-socket in a standard CD drive bay . .
Thanks,
Phil.