Database Server Documentation

General configuration options:

• hostname: McNairDBServ
• user full name: McNair Center
• username: mcnair
• don't encrypt home directory
• manual partitioning (see below for RAID 10 configuration)

Database server drive partition specs:

• RAID 10 the four drives
• 1 MB out of each drive for bootloader
• use all of M.2 drive as swap space
• PCIe express drive format as linux partition (for PostgreSQL data directory)

Installing Ubuntu (2/19/2016)

First try at installation didn't work when the installer got to the partition disks step, because the SSD and M.2 drives weren't being detected for the partitioner. I suspected that there was a driver missing, but I don't see how we'd be able to install a driver without a proper bash shell (the installer does come with a shell, but it's very limited).

Kranthi and I took another look at the PCIe slots on the mobo and it turns out that the two PCIe slots that we had plugged the M.2 drive and SSD into were linked to CPU2, whereas the database server was only configured with one CPU, which was put in CPU1. From pages 2-19 and 2-20 of the mobo datasheeet, we put the M.2 drive in PCIE1 and the SSD in PCIE3, where are both linked to CPU1 and tried the installation process again.

This time, two new drives showed up in the partitioner (/dev/nvme0n1 and /dev/nvme1n1), but they're both listed as unknown (their capacities, however, are displayed as 400.1 GB and 512.1 GB respectively, which technically identifies the first as the SSD and the second as the M.2 drive). Going back to section 2.5 of the mobo datasheet suggests that we should assign each device in the expansion slot an IRQ (from my understanding, an IRQ is a number from 0 to 15 that marks the priority level of the device). To do so, we have to use the BIOS menu, so I aborted the installation and pressed the 'Delete' key during the boot up to get to the BIOS menu.

But through the entire tree of menus, I was only able to find an IRQ for Serial Port 1 and Serial Port 2, under NCT6779D Super IO Configuration. Wikipedia's article on interrupt requests notes that, "PCI Express does not have physical interrupt lines at all, and uses MSI exclusively." So I guess IRQs are no longer a big deal (they "went the way of the dodo," as Ed says). With no other way to label the PCIe drives from the BIOS menu making itself clear, I exited and rebooted the computer to proceed with the installation.

Interesting side note: the mobo datasheet notes that the motherboard comes with utilities to set up RAID arrays. But there doesn't seem to be any benefit of doing it on the motherboard over doing it in the Ubuntu partitioner.

In the partitioner, I deleted the partitions that were automatically generated and started each drive off with a new partition table. Then I partitioned the drives as follows:

• /dev/nvme0n1 (aka the 400 GB Intel SSD)
  • entire space (~400 GB) as primary partition. use as ext4 filesystem, mount point: /, bootable flag off.
• /dev/nvme1n1 (aka the 512 GB M.2 drive)
  • half (~256 GB) as primary partition. use as swap space (bootable flag off).
  • the other half (~256 GB) as primary partition. use as ext4 filesystem, mount: /var/postgresql, bootable flag off.
• for each of the four 3.0 TB hard drives (aka /dev/sda, /dev/sdb, /dev/sdc, and /dev/sdd)
  • 10 MB primary partition, use as "reserved BIOS boot area" (bootable flag can't be changed, so leave it set to off)
  • the rest of the space as a primary partition, use as ext4 filesystem, mount to /bulk, bootable flag off