System Configuration Setup

161

Configuring MegaRAID IDE

RAID

Minimum Number of

Maximum Number of

Level

Physical Drives

Physical Drives

 

 

 

0

One

Two

 

 

 

1

Two

Two

 

 

 

Selecting a RAID Level

To ensure the best performance, you should select the optimal RAID level when you create a system drive. The optimal RAID level for your disk array depends on the following factors:

cNumber of drives in the disk array

cCapacity of the drives in the array

cNeed for data redundancy

cDisk performance requirements

The Factors you need to consider when selecting a RAID level are listed below.

 

 

 

 

Max.

Fault

Level

Description and Use

Pros

Cons

Drives

Tolerant

 

 

 

 

 

 

0

Data divided in blocks

High date through-

No fault tolerance.

One to

No

 

and distributed sequen-

put for large files.

All data lost if any

Two

 

 

tially (pure striping).

 

drive fails.

 

 

 

Use for non-critical data

 

 

 

 

 

that requires high perfor-

 

 

 

 

 

mance.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

1

Data duplicated on

100 percent data

Doubles disk

Two

Yes

 

another disk (mirror-

redundancy.

space. Reduced

 

 

 

ing). Use for read-inten-

 

performance dur-

 

 

 

sive fault-tolerant

 

ing rebuilds.

 

 

 

systems.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Configuring Arrays

After you have attached all physical disk drives, perform the following actions to prepare a RAID disk array: