It used to be common, before "the cloud", to have many apparently unnecessary partitions in a server install. One for /, one for /var, one for /home, one for sw

It used to be common, before "the cloud", to have many apparently unnecessary partitions in a server install. One for /, one for /var, one for /home, one for swap at the low sector numbers... The idea is that /var filling up would not make the system unrecoverable.