Swift Server Hardware, Partitioning, and OS information

There are two types of servers involved in a Swift cluster - the front end proxy (ms-fe, standing for media store front end) and the back end storage node (ms-be).

ms-fe

The front end proxies are running on high performance misc servers built with:

two 250GB disks
16GB RAM

The disks are partitioned using the raid1-250G-1partition.cfg partman recipe:

200GB partition on each disk software RAID 1 for /, ext3
the rest for two swap partitions (one on each disk)

ms-be

The back end storage nodes are running on Dell R720xd machines with:

twelve 2TB disks
two ssds 150GB each (on some hosts)
48GB RAM

For hosts with ssds, the disks are partitioned such that

the last two disks have a 55GB partition for /, set up with software RAID 1, ext3
the last two disks have a small (1GB) partition for swap
the last two disks have a small (93GB) partition formatted for account and container storage
all other disks are formatted with one large XFS partition for swift object storage.

The reason for this is that the ssds show up as /dev/sdm and /dev/sdn instead of /dev/sda and /dev/sdb, because of where they can be cabled up in the box.

Hosts without ssds are partitioned such that

the first two disks have a 60GB partition for /, set up with software RAID 1, ext3
the first two disks have a small (1G) partition for swap
the first two disks have a large (the rest, or ~1.95T) partition formatted for object storage
all other disks are formatted with one large XFS partition for swift object storage.

The partman recipe (ms-be-ssd.cfg or ms-be.cfg) only partitions the first or last two disks and doesn't create the XFS partition. Puppet partitions the rest.

The below applies only to previously installed hosts; these will soon be replaced.

The back end storage nodes are running on Dell C2100 machines with:

twelve 2TB disks
48GB RAM

The disks are partitioned such that

the first two disks have a small (1MB) partition for grub
the first two disks have a 250GB partition for /, set up with software RAID 1, ext3
the first two disks have a small (4G) partition for swap
the first two disks have a large (the rest, or ~1.75T) partition formatted for object storage
all other disks are formatted with one large XFS partition for swift object storage.

The partman recipe (raid1-2TB-1partition.cfg) only partitions the first two disks and doesn't create the XFS partition. Puppet partitions the rest.