1. Prerequisites

Disk(s) Partitioning

Main or first disk

The configuration of the first disk is easily done through the web interface of the cloud provider.

	Filesystem	Mount Point	Size
1	ext4	/boot	1 Gio
2	ext4	/	25 Gio
3	Swap	swap	512 Mio
4	ext4	/mnt/data1	1.8 Tio

Extra Disks

For each additional disk, we will create a partition, format it, and mount it.

To list all the disks and their partitions, use the command lsblk

For each extra drives:

• Start the fdisk utility with the device name:

  fdisk /dev/sdx
  

• At the fdisk command prompt, press n to create a new partition. You will be asked to choose whether you want to create a primary or extended partition. Press p for primary or e for extended.
• Next, specify the partition number (e.g., 1 for the first partition).
• Define the starting and ending sectors for the partition. You can simply press Enter to use the default values and use the entire available space.
• Apply the change to the partition table with the w command.
• Format the newly created partition with and take note of the newly created filesystem UUID:

  mkfs -t ext4 /dev/sd{a-b-c}1
  

• Create a mounting point folder for the new partition:

  mkdir -p /mnt/data{1-2-3}
  

• Add the new partition and mounting point folder to the /etc/fstab file, use the UUID you noted when formatting the partition:

  UUID=xxxxxxxx-xxxx-xxxx-xxxx-xxxxxxxxxxxx       /mnt/data{1-2-3}      ext4    defaults        0       0
  

• Reboot

Final Partition Table

NAME   MAJ:MIN RM  SIZE RO TYPE MOUNTPOINTS
sda      8:0    0  1.8T  0 disk 
├─sda1   8:1    0    1G  0 part /boot
├─sda2   8:2    0   25G  0 part /
├─sda3   8:3    0  512M  0 part [SWAP]
├─sda4   8:4    0    1K  0 part 
├─sda5   8:5    0  1.8T  0 part /mnt/data1
└─sda6   8:6    0  1.9M  0 part 
sdb      8:16   0  1.8T  0 disk 
└─sdb1   8:17   0  1.8T  0 part /mnt/data2
sdc      8:32   1  1.8T  0 disk 
└─sdc1   8:33   1  1.8T  0 part /mnt/data3

Installing MergerFS

The mergerfs utility is a union filesystem tool that can logically merge multiple partitions into a single, unified view.

• Install the mergerfs package:

  apt update && apt -y install mergerfs
  

• Create a mounting point folder for the union filesystem:

  mkdir -p /mnt/storage
  

• Add the union filesystem and mounting point folder to the /etc/fstab file:

  /mnt/data* /mnt/storage fuse.mergerfs  defaults,nonempty,allow_other,use_ino,cache.files=partial,moveonenospc=true,category.create=mfs,dropcacheonclose=true,minfreespace=250G,fsname=mergerfs 0 0
  

• Reboot

Required Packages

Install the minimal required packages to use the SEEDbox playbook:

apt update && apt install -y git python3 python3-pip python3-passlib python3-lxml python3-pbkdf2 ansible
# optional
apt update && apt install -y python-is-python3 

Now, let’s install the Docker collection from Ansible Galaxy, which provides many useful modules for managing Docker resources:

ansible-galaxy collection install community.docker

Checking Ansible Install

ansible --version  
ansible --version | grep "python version"