12.19.4. Recommended Partitioning Scheme

Unless you have a reason for doing otherwise, we recommend that you create the following partitions:

A swap partition (at least 256 MB) — swap partitions are used to support virtual memory. In other words, data is written to a swap partition when there is not enough RAM to store the data your system is processing.

In years past, the recommended amount of swap space increased linearly with the amount of RAM in the system. But because the amount of memory in modern systems has increased into the hundreds of gigabytes, it is now recognized that the amount of swap space that a system needs is a function of the memory workload running on that system. However, given that swap space is usually designated at install time, and that it can be difficult to determine beforehand the memory workload of a system, we recommend determining system swap using the following table.

Table 12.2. Recommended System Swap Space

Amount of RAM in the System	Recommended Amount of Swap Space
4GB of RAM or less	a minimum of 2GB of swap space
4GB to 16GB of RAM	a minimum of 4GB of swap space
16GB to 64GB of RAM	a minimum of 8GB of swap space
64GB to 256GB of RAM	a minimum of 16GB of swap space
256GB to 512GB of RAM	a minimum of 32GB of swap space

Note that you can obtain better performance by distributing swap space over multiple storage devices, particularly on systems with fast drives, controllers, and interfaces.

A PPC PReP boot partition on the first partition of the hard drive — the PPC PReP boot partition contains the YABOOT boot loader (which allows other POWER systems to boot Red Hat Enterprise Linux). Unless you plan to boot from a floppy or network source, you must have a PPC PReP boot partition to boot Red Hat Enterprise Linux.
For IBM System i and IBM System p users: The PPC PReP boot partition should be between 4-8 MB, not to exceed 10 MB.
A /boot/ partition (100 MB) — the partition mounted on /boot/ contains the operating system kernel (which allows your system to boot Red Hat Enterprise Linux), along with files used during the bootstrap process. Due to the limitations of most PC firmware, creating a small partition to hold these is a good idea. For most users, a 100 MB boot partition is sufficient.
Warning
If you have a RAID card, be aware that Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5.8 does not support setting up hardware RAID on an IPR card. You can boot the standalone diagnostics CD prior to installation to create a RAID array and then install to that RAID array.
A root partition (3.0 GB - 5.0 GB) — this is where "/" (the root directory) is located. In this setup, all files (except those stored in /boot) are on the root partition.
A 3.0 GB partition allows you to install a minimal installation, while a 5.0 GB root partition lets you perform a full installation, choosing all package groups.

Warning — do not place `/var` on network storage

Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5.8 does not support having a separate /var on a network filesystem (for example, NFS, iSCSI, or NBD) The /var directory contains critical data that must be read from or written to during the boot process before establishing network services.

However, you may have /var/spool, /var/www or other subdirectories on a separate network disk, just not the complete /var filesystem.