filePro RAID comments wanted

[Walter Vaughan]

Okay I've decided on building a Brand-New Bad *ss filePro server.
It's ordered, so (Dual Xeon, Pure Intel w/ SATA RAID 5) I don't
need advice on RAID 10 vs 5 vs 1+0, SCSI vs SATA.

What I need is advice on keeping things simple. Since day one
we've always had an /etc/default/fppath that looks like
/appl

/appl
so everything's been in /appl/filepro or /appl/fp. Since FreeBSD
and most other systems like to suggest mounting user directories
and other sundries on different mount points the / directory
typically only gets 10-20% of the disk space, which sucks for
the /appl end of things.
I've noticed that many of us have filepro mounted on a /u mount
point, HOWEVER we've got probably 10,000 places in code since
1986 that has hard coded locations like /appl/fp/shellscript.

Call it bad programming, but hey it's a rapid application environment.
We were rapid. Rapid is more important than bright.

Didn't say we're the brightest. Just more rapider.

Anyway I think that the best thing would be to have
a single mount point rather than accept the defaults
and then combine the disk space that would have gone
to /usr with the / mount point. Its not like I plan or would
want to just add bigger drives later. I expect this disk setup to
last as long as the previous. (7 years)

I'm not worried about fdisk times. I've jerked the plugs out
of many a freeBSD box the past few years under load, and not
once did it expect to fdisk upon reboot. Heck with redundant
power supplies, it should never go without power, and with
a hot spare even the loss of a drive will be invisible.

I guess I've talked myself into doing it this way, just looking
for something I'm missing.

Let the cannonballs fly.

--
Walter