Can a drive be a server?

[idsinc]

Can I have 3 drives in one physical server and treat each drive like a server?

If so, would I install the operating system on each drive, and give each drive an IP address?

I was wondering if I could run a webserver emailserver and dbserver on a single machine? Then later on, move the drives to their own hardware.

[Kloschüssel]

I would do that with virtualization:

1] You would need a fourth drive, giving you sda, sdb, sdc, sdd
2] Install the host system on sda
3] Install your favorite virtual machine (xen, vmware, ..)
4] Configure 3 virtual machines and assign them as physical storage the drives sdb, sdc, sdd accordingly
5] Install each virtual machine like you would install a non-virtual server

You can later move the drive to real server and it SHOULD work. But I would test that with each machine. If you cannot afford downtimes you may also clone the virtual machine hdds using dd and use the cloned one to test. It has the little bonus effect that if you would break it somehow no data is lost because you moved only a backup copy and the original is still in place.

Please note that the host for the virtual machines should have at least 512mb ram for each of them. Calculating 3*512mb = 1536mb + reserved memory for the host itself sums up to 2gb ram and you would also want a quad core so that each virtual can use exclusively one core without blocking each other. If you want dual core on each virtual you would want a cpu like the Intel Xeon X7560 with 8 cores or more. Thus it may become expensive even if you save money cause you buy 1 powerful pc and not 3 lame ones.

[idsinc]

Originally Posted by spazio View Post

Anybody has an idea on how to download vmware images on howtoforge with links or anyother way directly on a linux server partition without X. This to avoid having to download on desktop and reupload on the server?

falko:

That's not possible.

This is the response the ubuntu experts gave, and this is exactly my problem. I don't know how to put vmware on a pure server... has no desktop installed.

[Kloschüssel]

If your host device is unix and your virtuals will be unix too I would suggest to use the Xen hypervisor. It is my personal favorite and is free. If you need help you can still contact the (commercial) support for it.

But of course you are free to use any other hypervisor including the commercial VMWare one or others. Assuming you're not very well with search engines , a rather complete list can be found here: Comparison of platform virtual machines (Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia).

[idsinc]

I have three drives connected in the server. Each drive is one TB.

sda partition #1 of SCSI3 (0,1,0) as ext2
sdb partition #7 of SCSI4 (0,1,0) as /swap
sdc partition #5 of SCSI4 (0,1,0) as /swap

I don't know why the default made the two TB drives /swap. I want only 32G of /swap on the first drive.

I'm trying to format those two /swap drives to clear old data from them also.

1. I want to make them ext drives, so I can use the space for webpages.

2. When the system first boots, there is a list of installations. I can see the old installations listed. How do I clear those? In windows I could go in and delete stuff from the drive like information on a spare drive, etc, but I'm floundering now. :/ Do I just go to a file somewhere inside the system and delete them? I don't want anything that is dual boot, I want to use the Ubuntu 10.10 installation only, and I don't want the others to be an option.

I appreciate all the help.

[Kloschüssel]

This makes no sense:

sda partition #1 of SCSI3 (0,1,0) as ext2
sdb partition #7 of SCSI4 (0,1,0) as /swap
sdc partition #5 of SCSI4 (0,1,0) as /swap

I don't know why the default made the two TB drives /swap. I want only 32G of /swap on the first drive.

Which default? What the heck are you doing? You are far off from what I believe you want..

[idsinc]

This makes no sense:



Which default? What the heck are you doing? You are far off from what I believe you want..

Yeah, I see that. So far this is what I've done.

1. Installed howtoforge.com/perfect-server-ubuntu-10.10-maverick-meerkat-ispconfig-3
My kernel is Linux2.6.35-25-server

2. Set up my network with a block of static IPs

3. Have 3 (sda, sdb, sdc) drives each 1 TB

I have an internet connection (eth0 only) and I can contact (from WAN and LAN) the
a. "IT Works!" page
b. "ISPConfig login
c. squirrelmail login

When I looked at what happened to the drives, (following the install format above), it made two whole drives /SWAP. All I wanted was 32G of /swap, but I wasn't given the option. This happened by default.

4. I ENTER: ls /dev/sd* and I now see
/dev/sda
/dev/sda1
/dev/sda2
/dev/sda5
/dev/sdb
/dev/sdb1
/dev/sdc
/dev/sdc1.


5. I used fdisk to get rid of all the misc junk on the sdb and sdc drives, clear out old partitions of stuff that needed to go away.

6. I updated /boot/grub/grub.cfg to clean out all the references to old installations on the sdb and sdc drives.

I was under the impression that ISPConfig would be all I needed to create partitions for clients on this webserver, but I'm not used to just trusting command line code, and no picture of what is happening. I am brainwashed with Microsoft, and I'm trying to break loose from that. Yet, I've been looking for some kind of screen image I can use to get through this, without success. It does not have a 'desktop' installation.

I have one windows PC on the LAN, and I can go between the LAN and the WAN at this point to test different parts of the installation.

now fdisk -l looks like this:

Device Boot_____start______end______ blokcs ________id ____sys
/dev/sda1* _____1__________32______248832______83______Linux
Partition 1 does not end on cylinder boundary
/dev/sda2 ______32______121602___976510977___5______Extended
/dev/sda5 ______32 ______121602___976510976___ 8e______Linux

/dev/sdb1______1_________ 21601___976760001___83______Linux
/dev/sdc1 ______1_________ 21602___976765421 ___83______Linux

Disk /dev/dm-0 doesn't contain a valid partition table
Disk /dev/dm-1 doesn't contain a valid partition table

I don't know what /dev/dm is.

[Kloschüssel]

And what can I do for you?

/dev/dm are usually virtual devices created by the device mapper. See dmsetup, cryptsetup.

[idsinc]

And what can I do for you?

/dev/dm are usually virtual devices created by the device mapper. See dmsetup, cryptsetup.

Do I need to do anything to these drives to prepare them for using ISPConfig3? Is ISPConfig capable of setting up the client partitions? At least I think that's what it does. Would I have to RAID these drives in order to access all of them for adding clients?

[Kloschüssel]

I've never set up ISPConfig, but I would be surprised if it would set up the partitions and format them properly as that is something that is completely irrelevant for software that runs on a server.

You could either RAID the drives and/or put them in a large logical device. But if there should be data on that belongs to a customer i would try to backup / double store it as much as possible and two drives are not enough to accomplish that (see RAID6).