2.2.4. Partitioning the Hard Drives

Having chosen the storage type, you need to choose partitioning options on the INSTALLATION DESTINATION screen.

images/vzinstall13_2.png

Firstly, you will need to choose which of the disks are marked as System, Datastore, and Cache:

  • Use the System radio button to select a disk where the root partition with OpenVZ system files (mounted to /) will be kept.
  • Use Datastore checkboxes to mark disks where virtual machines and containers will be kept. All such disks will be organized into a single volume group and mounted to the /vz mount point. At least one disk need to be marked as a data store.

Secondly, in the bottom of the screen, you will need to choose:

  • Automatically configure partitioning and click Done to have the installation program create the default layout on the server.
  • I will configure partitioning and click Done to manually partition your disk(s).

When partitioning the disks, keep in mind that OpenVZ requires these partitions:

  • Boot: mount point /boot, 1 GB, boot partition with OpenVZ boot files, created on each HDD,
  • Root: mount point /, 12-24 GB, root partition with OpenVZ files, created on the HDD marked System,
  • Swap: paging partition with the swap file system, created on the HDD marked System. The size depends on RAM:

    • if RAM is below 2 GB, swap size should be twice the RAM,
    • if RAM is 2-8 GB, swap size should be equal to RAM,
    • if RAM is 8-64 GB, swap size should be half the RAM,
    • otherwise swap size should be 32 GB
  • Data storage, mount point /vz, at least 30 GB, storage for virtual machines, containers, and OS and application templates, an LVM volume group that spans all HDDs marked Datastore.
  • In addition, either a 1 MB partition with the BIOS boot file system or a 200 MB partition with the EFI boot file system is required depending on your server configuration.

A typical partition layout for OpenVZ on basic storage may look like this:

images/vzinstall14_2.png