+ A good and sustainable server installation benefits from some planning ahead. As the saying goes, planning ahead will substitute for many a mishap. This section provides basic guidance. Having made various decisions and some preparation, the installation itself is an easy step-by-step procedure, selecting one of various available methods.

+ Fedora Server Edition uses the Fedora installation program, Anaconda, as do several other editions and spins.

+ This chapter and its subchapters cover general planning principles and focus on a _bare metal_ installation. The implementation of the principles for a virtual machine is covered in the chapter __Virtualization__.

+ The question of the minimum requirements is always raised, even though it depends entirely on the deployment plan.

+ Nevertheless, technically, you can run a default Fedora Server on a storage space of about 5 GiB. The installed system occupies about 2.5 GiB. Of course,  such a server would hardly be useful for anything. The smallest disc currently available for purchase is 64 GiB. With that, you could satisfactorily run a small to medium server for web and mail services. For virtual machines, we currently use 40 GiB as the default. 

+ If you ask three system administrators about the best practice for hard disk partitioning, you will get at least five different answers. There is no clear, best way to partition your disks. A discussion of the details is beyond the scope of this article. Talk to your friends, read up on the subject, search for articles, and make your own judgment. 

+ The Fedora Server Edition working group has also discussed the topic and agreed on a recommended default configuration, which is explained in the following sections. Its top priority for servers is the highest possible reliability and fault tolerance as well as the lowest possible service interruption, but accepts a higher effort for system administration, for example.   

+ On a _BIOSboot_ machine, Anaconda creates at first a small (1 MiB) ```BIOS boot``` system partition on the first drive, which stores the second stage bootloader which is required by GNU/Grub. Subsequently, it creates 

+ a ``/boot``` partition of 1 GiB, which contains all the files necessary for booting Linux, especially the kernel. The remaining area is completely filled with a third partition containing one large volume group (LVM VG) named `fedora` by default. You end up with three primary partitions on the hard disk that use all the available space. 

+ In the case of a _UEFI_ boot system, Anaconda first creates the required 'EFI System' partition and then adds the aforementioned ```/boot``` partition and one large LVM partition and Volume Group (VG) as described above. You will end up with three partitions on the hard disk that completely occupy the available space.

+ In _each_ of these alternatives, Anaconda creates one logical volume of approximately 15 GiB (the exact value depends on the disk capacity of your system) named `root` for the operating system and its software. The remaining available space is at the disposal of the system administrator to store user data.

+ In this way, any error that may occur in the file system should have as little impact as possible and jeopardize as little valuable data as at all possible. For this, the additional effort in system administration is accepted.

+ You will select `Custom` and create the `BIOSboot`, `efi` and `/boot` partitions as required and a small partition and VG dedicated to the operating system.  A good size for this VG (eg. ```sysvg```) is, approximately, 30 GiB. Occupying the remaining space, you will create a dedicated partition and Volume group  (eg. ```usrvg```) for user data. You will end up with four partitions on the hard disk (boot, sysvg, usrvg with Bios boot machines and hard disks up to 2 TB) or alternatively (BIOSboot/efi, boot, sysvg, usrvg for all other machines) that use all the available space.

+ Create an LV (e.g. ```sys_root```) of about  15 GiB for the operating system and maybe additional LVs for the runtime environment, e.g. an LV ```sys_log``` of about 5 GB. Mount it at ```/var/log``` to prevent log files from flooding and blocking the system and, vice versa, to prevent any other space issue on the root partition from blocking your logs and complicating error analysis. The remaining free space is left for distribution as needed over time. Similar to the default partitioning, all user data is created as LVs in ```usrvg``` and mounted in the corresponding directories of the system. This is the maximum possible separation of system and user data with only one hard disk available. And with today's typical hard drive size of 2 TB and more, those dedicated 30 GBs don't interfere with the effective use of disk space anymore.

+ Whether on hardware or on a virtual machine, an installation requires the download and the verification of an appropriate installation media. On your Workstation open a terminal window and navigate to the directory where you want to keep the files. We assume your home directory here. Then issue the following commands line by line.

+ You can safely ignore the warning from the last command about improperly formatted lines.

+ An installation on bare metal requires the transfer of the installation file to a bootable media, usually a USB memory stick. There are several options:

+ . As a (typically comfy) server sysadmin to be, you may use the Fedora project provided graphical utility, "Media Writer" to fullfill that task. See https://docs.fedoraproject.org/en-US/quick-docs/creating-and-using-a-live-installation-image/#using-fedora-media-writer[Creating and using a live installation image - Using Fedora Media Writer] for guidance on how to use it.

+ . As a (hard core) server sysadmin to be, you might prefer a quick and efficient CLI utilitiy, the `dd` command. Being already in a terminal window, connect the USB stick and issue the following command to get a list of attached devices.

+ Just in case, umount the device and transfer the downloaded installation file to the device in one go. For the above example use

+ . And as a (typically busy) server sysadmin to be, you might appreciate a tool provided by the Open Source https://www.ventoy.net/[ventoy] project. A small utility on a USB stick of any size takes over the presentation of the device to the hardware as bootable, and reads itself the ISO file, which is stored on a data partition of the stick. Depending on its size, it can accomodate multiple ISO files. The server sysadmin can choose between them at boot time in a selection menu. With a new version simply copy the ISO file as it is on the stick and you are ready to go. No more dd and no Media Writer.