Seagate ST1100FR0000 Seagate X8 Accelerator User Guide for Linux - Page 15

Creating File Systems

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8.0 CREATING FILE SYSTEMS Any standard Linux file system may be placed on the Seagate X8 Accelerator device simply by using its standard mkfs utility. If you need only one partition per device, Seagate recommends creating file system directly on a /dev/vgca0, /dev/vgcb0,... block device. In such case creating a software partition using fdisk/gparted is not needed and therefore not recommended. fdisk does not work on devices larger than 2TB, NOTE so "parted" must be used instead. 8.1 XFS HIGH PERFORMANCE OPTIONS Performance of many applications can be improved if individual files are aligned on 4KB boundaries. XFS allows setting "sector" size equal to 4KB, which guarantees the necessary alignment for all files. Seagate recommends the following standard mkfs command line for XFS to enable the highest performance: # mkfs.xfs -s size=4096 /dev/vgca0 Note that some applications (e.g. Sybase) that use direct I/O of

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S
EAGATE
X8 A
CCELERATOR
U
SER
G
UIDE FOR
L
INUX
, R
EV
. A
11
8.0
C
REATING
F
ILE
S
YSTEMS
Any standard Linux file system may be placed on the Seagate X8 Accelerator device simply by using its standard mkfs utility.
If you need only one partition per device, Seagate recommends creating file system directly on a /dev/vgca0, /dev/vgcb0,…
block device. In such case creating a software partition using fdisk/gparted is not needed and therefore not recommended.
8.1
XFS H
IGH
P
ERFORMANCE
O
PTIONS
Performance of many applications can be improved if individual files are aligned on 4KB boundaries. XFS allows setting
"sector" size equal to 4KB, which guarantees the necessary alignment for all files.
Seagate recommends the following standard mkfs command line for XFS to enable the highest performance:
Note that some applications (e.g. Sybase) that use direct I/O of <4KB size may be incompatible with the “-s size=4096”
option. Such applications would report I/O errors. If you see such problem, do not use the “-s size=4096” option.
8.2
EXT3 H
IGH
P
ERFORMANCE
O
PTIONS
At high write workloads, EXT3 can bottleneck on writes to its journal, especially on devices as high in performance as the
Seagate X8 Accelerator device. To help eliminate this bottleneck, Seagate recommends that additional space be set aside
for the EXT3 journal using the following option:
Another alternative, applicable in cases where the EXT3 journaling is not needed at all e.g. scratch-areas, is to simply use
EXT2 which does not have journaling.
8.3
A
UTO
-M
OUNTING
S
EAGATE
D
EVICE ON
L
INUX
S
YSTEMS
If auto mount of the Seagate X8 Accelerator device is desired at system startup, the following steps are required:
Step 1:
In /etc/fstab add entries with 'noauto' keyword with 0,0 options for the X8 Accelerator device, to ensure that
auto-mount is not attempted before X8 Accelerator drivers are loaded during boot-up process.
Step 2:
Modify /etc/sysconfig/vgcd.conf and assign space separated list of X8 Accelerator devices to a variable
MOUNT_POINTS.
During driver load, all devices specified with MOUNT_POINT variable and corresponding /etc/fstab entries will be considered
for auto-mount.
N
OTE
fdisk does not work on devices larger than 2TB,
so "parted" must be used instead.
# mkfs.xfs -s size=4096 /dev/vgca0
# mkfs.ext3 -J size=400 <other standard options as required> /dev/vgca0
/dev/vgca0
/mnt1
ext3
noauto,defaults
0
0
/dev/vgcb0
/mnt2
xfs
noauto,defaults
0
0
# The list of mount points that the script should mount
MOUNT_POINTS="/mnt1 /mnt2"