Boot drive requirements for Red Hat Enterprise Linux

Issue

• On the x86 and x86_64 architectures, Red Hat Enterprise Linux uses the DOS MBR partitioning format for its boot device. This partitioning scheme supports a maximum size of 2.2 terabytes (TB) per disk. Red Hat Enterprise Linux 4 and 5 provide support for drives that are larger than 2.2TB through an alternative partitioning scheme, GUID partition table (GPT). The legacy PC BIOS is unable to boot off of GPT-partitioned disks and so the boot disk must use the DOS MBR partition table. This limitation does not apply to the Itanium (ia64) architecture, which is able to boot off of GPT disks.

• After installation has completed, the parted disk partitioning tool can be used to apply a GPT partition table to devices which are to be used for data only.