RHEL 6.4 64bit Desktop Mutiple Hard Drive configuration... Best Practices???

the partitioning part is easy; you simply specify the device you want to use during setup when creating custom partitions

question is, how are your tb drives configured?  hardware raid?  software raid 0?
that will maximize your space with all 3 drives but offers no redundancy if one drive fails

I was not planning on using any RAID setup for the drives. If I did it would be SW raid. I was only planning on stretching the partition across all three for one drive 6TB in size.

The space on these machines is used only for by product output while MATLAB runs it decompression. Analysis output files will be moved off the machines as soon as they are done crunching.

stretching a partition across drives is raid 0

How would I do a custom layout of the SSD that will have all the files, directories etc for RHEL 6.4 along with the /home and /usr folders on the 6TB RAID 0 array?

during setup you do a custom partition
it will list the devices; you just select the device and add the mount point and specify the size and file system

I may be a newb, but I know that more is needed than just what you listed. I am looking at the install and am in the "Custom Layout" menu.

Your answer is not necessarly wrong, but it certainly is not right. Linux still needs a root partition, boot partition etc. for the installation to continue...

At this point I have:
1. A RAID 0 that needs to be mounted somewhere....
2. A 250GB SSD that needs to be parttioned for RHEL to load...
3. The /home and /usr folders on the RAID 0 array.

Thanks

yes of course you need your other partitions
if you want the ssd for the rest, then create /boot (i usually use 256mb which is sufficient) on your ssd, a swap partition (size depends on physical memory) and / with the remaining space;
create /home and /usr on the big drive

Perfect! Will give her a shot in the AM. Thanks for the details.

After working in Windozzzz for over a decade, it can get very frustrating at the simple things I don't know about Linux. :( A senior admin would be a great asset.... unfortunately all of our have gone and I was thrown in the water and told to swim....

I ended up doing a HW RAID 0. The machines I am working with had that built in. The data on the 6TB RAID 0 is disposable, so no problems there.
Here is the first draft at my first custom config:
SSD has / across the entire disk
No swap file as we have 60GB of ram in this machine.
HW RAID 0 6TB
/home 5.8TB
/tmp 1GB
/var 1GB
Reasoning behind this config is that the OS & SW (MATLAB & Synergy) will be loaded on the SSD drive for speed. /var, /tmp on the TB drive due to /var/log file always graowing and slowing the SSD down if placed there. /tmp on the TB drive as I have read that the /tmp file tends to shorten the life of the SSD drives and /home on the TB as the data generated by MATLAB is huge but disposable.

Let me know. My main concern is the size I chose for /var and /tmp. After reading this link http://www.tldp.org/LDP/intro-linux/...ect_03_01.html it mentioned the entire size of / was 100-500MB, so I guessed that 1GB should suffice for /var and /tmp.

Comments? Concersns?
Thanks to all members for your support!

Great thanks for the heads up. I am going to increse those two partitions as recommeded.

Thanks for your help!