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Dell HPC NFS Storage Solution High Availability Configurations with Large Capacities
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A.3. Server software configuration
All the operations below apply to each R710.
A.3.1. Install RHEL 6.1, configure swap disks, and install XFS packages.
1. Install the RHEL6.1 x86_64 operating system (kernel version 2.6.32-131.0.15.el6.x86_64) on the
RAID1 virtual disk.
o Make sure MD storage is not attached to the servers during the OS installation.
o Do not select or include the RAID0 virtual disk for use in the OS install, it will be used for swap
space in steps below.
2. After the OS is installed, setup swap on the RAID0 device.
o # parted -l will show the device associated with the PERC H700 with a size appropriate for
the RAID 0, about 292 GiB; such as /dev/sdb:
...
Model: DELL PERC H700 (scsi)
Disk /dev/sdb: 292GB
...
o # mkswap -L SWAP /dev/sdb
o # swapon p 10 /dev/sdb
o Edit /etc/fstab and add an entry for this swap device. Please make sure that the entry is listed
BEFORE the default swap space that was created during OS install, if any.
LABEL=SWAP swap swap pri=10 0 0
Alternatively, the UUID can be used for identifying the new swap space:
# blkid | grep swap | grep -v lv
/dev/sdb1: UUID="c9d4a87c-22af-4596-97ee-511a67ddff13" TYPE="swap"
In that case, the entry in /etc/fstab will look like:
UUID=c9d4a87c-22af-4596-97ee-511a67ddff13 swap swap pri-10 0 0
o Test that swap can be enabled automatically when the server boots.
# swapoff a
# swapon -s
# swapon a
# swapon s
3. Obtain the XFS packages from the Red Hat Network (http://rhn.redhat.com) and install them.
xfsprogs-3.1.1-4.el6.x86_64.rpm
xfsprogs-devel-3.1.1-4.el6.x86_64.rpm
xfsdump-3.0.4-2.el6.x86_64.rpm