Planning UFS File Systems

After disks are formatted and divided into slices, you need to make a file system on each slice that will contain UFS files. See Chapter 22, Administering Disks (Tasks) for detailed information on how to format disks and divide them into slices.

When laying out file systems, you need to consider possible conflicting demands. Here are some suggestions:

• Distribute the work load as evenly as possible among different I/O systems and disk drives. Distribute /export/home and swap directories evenly across disks.

• Keep pieces of projects or members of groups within the same file system.

• Use as few file systems per disk as possible. On the system (or boot) disk you usually have three slices: /, /usr, and a swap area. On other disks create one or, at most, two slices. Fewer, roomier slices cause less file fragmentation than many small, over-crowded slices. Higher-capacity tape drives and the ability of ufsdump to handle multiple volumes make it easier to back up larger file systems.

• If you have some users who consistently create very small files, consider creating a separate file system with more inodes. However, most sites do not need to be concerned about keeping similar types of user files in the same file system.

See Chapter 27, Creating File Systems (Tasks) for information on default file system parameters as well as prerequisites and procedures for creating new file systems.