Filesystem
How to install Soyoustart or OVH server without Raid 1

How to install Soyoustart or OVH server without Raid 1

OVH or soyoustart control panel is not very user-friendly to use, recently I’ve been working on a client server with 3 disks on it. The client needed all those disks to be used for space. However ovh/soyoustart usually installs servers in Raid 1. So if a server has 3 * 120GB of disks you can only use 120GB disk space.

Even though its not very good idea to put a server in raid 0, but some times space requirement is more important. In this article, we will see how we can install a server without raid 1 and make sure that we can make use of complete space provided by 3 disks combined.

Step 1: Start installation!

The first step in this process will be to install the operating system with raid 0 only on disk one, later we can use other disks to either create volume groups or mount them directly. Let see how we can do that.

Click ‘Re-install’ and you will have the following window.

  1. Select the OS you need to install from drop down.
  2. Choose preferred language.
  3. Please make sure to check the “Custom installation” box.

Click next to move to next window.

Step 2: Start partitioning!

Partitioning part is really important, after clicking next from the last window, you will be seeing this window:

This window is very important.

  1. First, make sure that “Do you want to install solely on first the first disk” is checked as in the image.
  2. Now delete the partition pointed out by the arrow.

Your current partition config should look something like this:

Now you are left with only two partitions, first one is mounted on “/” which is where your OS will be installed. It might be a good idea to increase the space of this partition because maybe if you are going to use this server for virtualizor than it needs at least 80GB of the disk on the root.

To increase the space click “Edit”

  1. Click “Edit” so that you can increase partition space.
  2. Enter the required space, I’ve entered 80GB.
  3. Press save to save the changes.

Now your partition config will look something like this:

The second partition is the swap, and it can not be deleted. If you need to increase the swap space you can do similarly as we did above.

Please note that this is only the partitioning of one of the 3 disks present in the machine, rest of the 2 disks can be configured once the OS is installed. If you are now satisfied with your partition requirements of your first disk, you can click Next.

Step 3: Set Hostname!

Next window will let you set the hostname for your machine, you can leave rest of the settings as it is.

  1. Set hostname.
  2. Click Next.

Our next window is fairly simple.

Click “Confirm”, it will then start installing your server. Wait until the machine is installed, after the installation is completed you will get the email with your server login credentials.

Step 4: Finish Partitioning

After the OS is installed we have to take care of our 2 disks and remaining space on the first disk. We’ve assigned 80GB to the first partition and 512MB to swap partition on the first disk, so we still have some space left on disk one as well. Let us create a partition on the remaining space of the first disk.

fdisk /dev/sda

Devices on my machine are named “sda”, you can check accordingly if they are named different on yours, the command above will open the partitioning menu.

Here you can press “n” to create the new partition, and create this partition as the primary partition. For rest of the options while creating the partition, choose defaults, because we have to create this partition on remaining space available on the first disk.

Rest of the two partitions

Note: Skip this step if you are not going to create a volume group.

After we are done with the first partition we’ve to deal with rest of the two partitions available on the server. As I am going to create a volume group. So I will delete any partition created on these disks and use them directly on the volume group.

fdisk /dev/sdb

This will open the partitioning menu for the second disk, here you have to enter “d”, so that you can delete any partition present on this disk. Once all the partitions are deleted you can enter “w” to write the final partition table.

Do the same with the third disk as well.

Once done you are ready to create your volume group.

Step 5: Create Volume Group

I will step back a little and summarize what we are trying to do.

Disk 1

  • 1st Partition (80GB) – Mounted on “/”
  • Second Partition (512MB) – Swap.
  • Third Partition (Rest of the space) – Not mounted.

Disk 2

Plane disk, no partitions at all.

Disk 3

Same with disk 3 no partitions at all.

Volume group

We can now use 1 partition from first disk (that is not mounted anywhere) and rest of the two disks to create a volume group using following commands.

# creating physical volumes

pvcreate /dev/sda3 
pvcreate/dev/sdb 
pvcreate /dev/sdc

# creating volume group

vgcreate cyberpersons /dev/sda3 /dev/sdb /dev/sdc

You might notice that with the first command we’ve appended “3” at the end because the first disk had 3 partitions and first 2 are already in use, and the third one is unused.

And with the second and third command we’ve not used any number at the end, because second and third disks had no partitions in them.

Step 6: Create partitions and Mount them (Optional)

If you are not happy with the volume group option, you can create partitions on remaining two disks and mount them as per requirement. In step 4 we’ve deleted some partitions from second and third disk, and you might have left that part out because you are not interested in creating a volume group. Without the deletion of those partitions you must have following scheme on your server after the OS is installed.

Disk 1

  • 1st Partition (80GB) – Mounted on “/”
  • Second Partition (512MB) – Swap.
  • Third Partition (Rest of the space) – Not mounted.

Disk 2

One partition with all the space on disk – Not mounted.

Disk 3

One partition with all the space on disk – Not Mounted

Now we’ve 3 non-mounted partitions available on our server, we just have to install filesystem on them and mount them to our desired location, I will name these partitions as following.

  1. /dev/sda3
  2. /dev/sdb1
  3. /dev/sdc1
# create filesystem

mkfs -t ext3 /dev/sda3
mkfs -t ext3 /dev/sdb1
mkfs -t ext3 /dev/sdc1

# create folders to mount them

mkdir home
mkdir cyberpersons
mkdir cyberpers


# mount them

mount /dev/sda3 home
mount /dev/sdb1 cyberpersons
mount /dev/sdc1 cyberpers

This is how you can mount individual partitions, but I will prefer the volume group option, that way you can easily combine the usage and create one final partition which will have all the remaining space available for use.

If you have any questions, feel free to ask them in the comment box below.

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