Problem:
When installing via an AutoYaST setup file the partitioning portion of the setup fails when trying to allocate the LVM scheme I am using.
Details:
PXE Server + AutoYaST profile
The installation works fine if I setup a standard non-LVM or a standard-LVM setup. So for all those reading this there is nothing wrong with
the PXE Server or any of my non AutoYaST profile settings.
The AutoYaST XML file that I am using was generated after an installation of "ServerA" and I am attempting to re-install to "ServerA" using this same XML.
So, there should be no issues regarding disk since there are no changes to the system between the successful installation and the re-install.
I know what the issue is just not how to fix it.
Background:
We are a very heavily virtualized shop and as such SAN backend storage is highly utilized. We found some time ago that disk alignment would be key to lowering the SAN I/O utilization since we have 1000's of virtualized servers. So, during my rebuilds I was tasked with making this happen.
Also, since our systems change a lot we leverage LVM extensively. Instead of manually offsetting partitions to make them aligned.
If you take say /dev/sdb and assign the entire drive to an LVM Volume Group and then create your LV's the disk is automatically aligned since you are not creating
a /dev/sdb1 that has a partition offset that will need to be aligned.
After adopting this method our performance on the SAN went up due to less utilization and lower writes due to mis-aligned disk. Also the system performance increased locally using this method. However, now that I am looking to deploy this to all our systems during a re-build I find that I am having issues with AutoYaST.
It gives me the error: A logical volume with the requested size could not be created
Steps:
1. I simplified the installation by doing a standard build with normal partitions and using the LVM scheme described above on an additional disk with a mount to /test
2. Duplicated 1 but made the LV that was inside the VG 1/2 the size of the available disk
3. Imported the autoinstall.xml into the Configurator and manually set the additional disk like described
-this does work but it only works because when YaST is running it automatically creates /dev/sdb1 even though I did not specify it
4. Searched the web but have had no joy
5. Opened a support ticket with Novell (no help so far)
Thanks
--SLES 11 SP1 is the version I am installing
When installing via an AutoYaST setup file the partitioning portion of the setup fails when trying to allocate the LVM scheme I am using.
Details:
PXE Server + AutoYaST profile
The installation works fine if I setup a standard non-LVM or a standard-LVM setup. So for all those reading this there is nothing wrong with
the PXE Server or any of my non AutoYaST profile settings.
The AutoYaST XML file that I am using was generated after an installation of "ServerA" and I am attempting to re-install to "ServerA" using this same XML.
So, there should be no issues regarding disk since there are no changes to the system between the successful installation and the re-install.
I know what the issue is just not how to fix it.
Background:
We are a very heavily virtualized shop and as such SAN backend storage is highly utilized. We found some time ago that disk alignment would be key to lowering the SAN I/O utilization since we have 1000's of virtualized servers. So, during my rebuilds I was tasked with making this happen.
Also, since our systems change a lot we leverage LVM extensively. Instead of manually offsetting partitions to make them aligned.
If you take say /dev/sdb and assign the entire drive to an LVM Volume Group and then create your LV's the disk is automatically aligned since you are not creating
a /dev/sdb1 that has a partition offset that will need to be aligned.
After adopting this method our performance on the SAN went up due to less utilization and lower writes due to mis-aligned disk. Also the system performance increased locally using this method. However, now that I am looking to deploy this to all our systems during a re-build I find that I am having issues with AutoYaST.
It gives me the error: A logical volume with the requested size could not be created
Steps:
1. I simplified the installation by doing a standard build with normal partitions and using the LVM scheme described above on an additional disk with a mount to /test
2. Duplicated 1 but made the LV that was inside the VG 1/2 the size of the available disk
3. Imported the autoinstall.xml into the Configurator and manually set the additional disk like described
-this does work but it only works because when YaST is running it automatically creates /dev/sdb1 even though I did not specify it
4. Searched the web but have had no joy
5. Opened a support ticket with Novell (no help so far)
Thanks
--SLES 11 SP1 is the version I am installing