How to build external logs?

[Darius Stout <darstout@yahoo.com>]

Hello Fellow XFS'ers,

I need you help.  I have read and have experienced how

writes are slow to a software RAID5 array.  I found
in the FAQ that to regain lost performance, I could
either setup a RAID1 array across a RAID5 array OR
set up a logging filesystem on a (preferably) existing
RAID1 array.  I prefer the latter but I am running
into
problems with the best way to build this.  

I am running two arrays of 11 100GB SCSI drives in 
RAID5 on a Gigabyte motherboard (8idxh) w/a 1.8GHz P4
and 1.5GB of memory.  I have a RAID1 consisting of two
Maxtor 60Gb EIDE 100 drives with space available for
extra filesystems.  The O/S is Redhat 7.2.  It has
been
loaded with the SGI Installer version 1.02.

I need to know 
  1) What kind of partition to create on the RAID1
	drives.
  2) What size should I make the logginf FS
considering
	the size of the data area?
  3) How do I determine the block size necessary for
	the data XFS portion if a external log may
	be involved?
  4) Is it ok to use a single RAID1 array to be the 
	target of two XFS external logs?
  5) Since the size of each array is 1 TB.  Is there 
	any other performance criteria I should take
	notice of?

Thank you very much. I really appreciate any input.

Darius Stout


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