HP xw4400 Mini White Paper

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

HP xw4400 Specifications

General

Processor	Intel Core 2 Duo
Chipset	Intel 975X
Memory	Up to 8 GB DDR2
Storage	SATA 3.0 Gb/s
Graphics	NVIDIA Quadro FX series
Operating System	Windows XP Professional
Expansion Slots	1 PCI Express x16, 1 PCI Express x1, 3 PCI
Ports	6 USB 2.0, 2 PS/2, 1 serial, 1 parallel, 1 RJ-45
Optical Drive	DVD-ROM