5.4Configuring Logical Drives

After you have installed the MegaRAID SCSI 320-2 controller in the server and have attached all physical disk drives, perform the following actions to prepare a RAID array:

1.Optimize the MegaRAID SCSI 320-2 controller options for your system. See Chapter 3 for additional information.

2.Press <Ctrl><M> to run the MegaRAID Manager.

3.If necessary, perform a low-level format of the SCSI drives that will be included in the array and the drives to be used for hot spares.

4.Customize the RAID array and define and configure one or more logical drives by selecting Easy Configuration or New Configuration.

5.Create and configure one or more system drives (logical drives) by selecting the RAID level, cache policy, read policy, and write policy.

6.Save the configuration.

7.Initialize the system drives.

After initialization, you can install the operating system.

5.4.1Optimizing Data Storage

5.4.1.1Data Access Requirements

Each type of data stored in the disk subsystem has a different frequency of read and write activity. If you know the data access requirements, you can more successfully determine a strategy for optimizing the disk subsystem capacity, availability, and performance.

Servers that support Video on Demand typically read the data often, but write data infrequently. Both the read and write operations tend to be long. Data stored on a general-purpose file server involves relatively short read and write operations with relatively small files.

5.4.1.2Array Functions

You must first define the major purpose of the disk array. Will this disk array increase the system storage capacity for general-purpose file and print servers? Does this disk array support any software system that

Configuring Logical Drives

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