[ale] Topic ideas for November meeting

[Steve Litt]

On Mon, 2 Nov 2015 22:00:47 +0000
"Lightner, Jeff" <JLightner at dsservices.com> wrote:

> Maybe a presentation on why to use (or not use) simple partitioning
> vs. metadisk software RAID vs. LVM.

I wish I could be there. I'd argue for simplicity (simple partitioning)
*unless* a disk crash would totally ruin your day (in which case RAID)
or if there's some reason that every year or so you can't resize
partitions (probably on a newer, larger disk that will be available by
that time), in which case of course you should use LVM.

>From what I understand (I'll probably be corrected on this), the
easiest way to encrypt disk content is with LVM, so that would be a use
case for LVM too.

I guess what I'm saying is this: If one doesn't need the benefits
bestowed by RAID, nor the benefits bestowed by LVM, then use simple
partitioning. It's simpler. It leads to simpler initramfs. It's very
robust if you use a good one. I use Ext4, and it never lets me down,
and it has all the fixit tools you need. And if something goes wrong,
you can pop in a System Rescue CD and ship the data over the wire to
another computer, or send it to another disk.

Another debate, within simple partitioning, might be Ext4 vs btrfs vs
zfs. I'd love to listen to *that* debate.

SteveT

Steve Litt 
October 2015 featured book: Thriving in Tough Times
http://www.troubleshooters.com/thrive