Best practice for Linux Independent disks

[TheVMinator]

Suppose I have an existing Linux system, and I need to add a second hard disk which will be an independent disk (this is RHEL 5).  What is the best practice for how the new virtual hard disk should be configured in Linux?  I need to be able to take snapshots of virtual hard disk 1, which has the Linux OS files, without taking snapshots of virtual hard disk 2, which is used just for data storage.  Should Logical Volume Manager be used?  What are all the considerations I need to take into account in this scenario?

Thanks

[AndreTheGiant]

Independed disk are not related to guest OS.

In your case (if you need to keep the disk changed) you must use persistend disk:

http://www.vladan.fr/esx-server-independant-disk-access-mode-persistent-and-nonpersistent-modes/

About LVM you can use it or not.

But do not create a volume acrosso a usual vmdk and a independ vmdk... you can have metadata corruption.

Andre

[TheVMinator]

Ok thanks

[TheVMinator]

OK thanks.  Are there any articles that document this issue of metadata corruption on LVMs spread over independent disks?

[AndreTheGiant]

As I know, there isn't a specific articles.

Maybe in the LVM Howto... and of course it could depends on filesystem type.

For example ext2/3/4 use groups to handle i-nodes and blocks... and a copy of the superblock...

So if you loose a single disk, you can still recover some data in a LVM volume.

Andre