Software RAID in Linux Workstations
Mini-White Paper
Introduction......................................................................................................................................... 3
RAID Basics ........................................................................................................................................ 3
RAID Overview ................................................................................................................................ 3
Software RAID in Linux ..................................................................................................................... 3
Performance and Bottlenecks ............................................................................................................. 4
RAID Levels ......................................................................................................................................... 4
RAID-Linear: Concatenating Disks....................................................................................................... 4
RAID-0: Striping ............................................................................................................................... 4
RAID-1: Mirroring............................................................................................................................. 5
RAID-2: Error Checking and Correction .............................................................................................. 6
RAID-3: Byte-Level Striping with Parity Disk.......................................................................................... 6
RAID-4: Block-Level Striping with Parity Disk ........................................................................................ 6
RAID-5: Block-Level Striping with Distributed Parity ............................................................................... 6
Additional RAID Levels...................................................................................................................... 7
RAID Configuration Strategies ............................................................................................................... 7
Performance .................................................................................................................................... 7
Capacity versus Fault-Tolerance ......................................................................................................... 7
Cost ............................................................................................................................................... 7
RAID Performance Considerations...................................................................................................... 8
Configuring Red Hat Enterprise Linux with Software RAID......................................................................... 8
Manual Setup of Software RAID Data Partitions..................................................................................... 11
Manual Configuration Examples.......................................................................................................... 12
RAID-0.......................................................................................................................................... 12
RAID-1.......................................................................................................................................... 12
RAID-5.......................................................................................................................................... 13
RAID-10........................................................................................................................................ 13
Disk Failure and Recovery................................................................................................................... 14
Spare Disks and Disk Failure ........................................................................................................... 14
Multiple Disk Failure....................................................................................................................... 15
Additional Configuration Information ................................................................................................... 15

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Other models in this manual:
Desktops - HP xw8200 Workstation (460.6 kb)