5.5 Planning Partitions for Data Storage

When you install Sentinel, you must mount the disk partition for local storage in the same location where Sentinel is installed, by default, the /var/opt/novell directory.

The entire directory structure under the /var/opt/novell/sentinel directory must reside on a single disk partition to ensure proper disk usage calculations. Otherwise, the automatic data management capabilities might delete event data prematurely. For more information about the Sentinel directory structure, see Section 15.0, Sentinel Directory Structure.

As a best practice, ensure that this data directory is located are stored on a separate disk partition than the executables, configuration, and operating system files. The benefits of storing variable data separately include easier backup of sets of files and simpler recovery in case of corruption, and provides additional robustness if a disk partition fills up. It also improves the overall performance of systems where smaller file systems are more efficient. For more information, see “Disk Partitioning”.

5.5.1 Using Partitions in Traditional Installations

On traditional installations, you can modify the disk partition layout of the operating system prior to installing Sentinel. The administrator should create and mount the desired partitions to the appropriate directories, based on the directory structure detailed in Section 15.0, Sentinel Directory Structure. When you run the installer, Sentinel is installed into the pre-created directories resulting in an installation that spans multiple partitions.

NOTE:

  • You can use the --location option while running the installer to specify a different top-level location than the default directories to store the file. The value that you pass to the --location option is prepended to the directory paths. For example, if you specify --location=/foo, the data directory will be /foo/var/opt/novell/sentinel/data and the config directory will be /foo/etc/opt/novell/sentinel/config.

  • You must not use filesystem links (for example, soft links) for the --location option.

5.5.2 Using Partitions in an Appliance Installation

Using the DVD ISO appliance format, you can configure the partitioning of the appliance filesystem during installation. For example, you can create a separate partition for the /var/opt/novell/sentinel mount point to put all data on a separate partition. However, for other appliance formats, you can configure the partitioning only after installation. You can add partitions and move a directory to the new partition by using the SuSE YaST system configuration tool. For information about creating partitions after the installation, see Section 12.4.2, Creating Partitions.