Raid configurations for dummies...hmm

Warning! graphic material.
No I didn't make this up myself.
May be actually useful, (though I can't vouch for accuracy).
DId I say you have been warned.
• Raid

Unfortunately, the phrase "graphic material" is not sufficient for me to hit the link. I'm behind a corporate firewall that is armed with the most accurate and up to date sexual material filters and alarm systems you can imagine. Big Brother, his sister and all of his cousins are watching my machine's Internet traffic 24/7/365
bogiesan

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RAID Configurations for Cisco servers

Hi All,
What is the RAID configuration for Cisco Appliance(Version 8.5) like CUCM, CUPS, CUIC, Unity etc?RAID Configuration will be done while installtion itself or we need to do it explicitly?
Regards,
Adithya

Hi Geoff,
Thanks for the reply. Just wanted to know whether if this RAID configuartion is similar to the other server RAID where we install Cisco applications.(Like OS & Application Software is RAID 1 and Database is RAID10).
Regards,
Adithya

Best Raid Configuration for a 8-1tb hhd server

Hi All,
I have been trying to figure out what would be the best raid configuration for my Windows 2012 essentials server. So I was wondering if I could get some advise on this. Here is what I would like to get out of this configuration.
I would like to split the 8-1tb drives into 2 VHD one with about 300gb for the OS to be installed on, and the rest to be use for storage. I want like to have good redundancy, fairly good read & write capabilities.
I will be using this server for a Small Web Page and Game Hosting, Email Exchange, Critical Application hosting.
I would like the ability to enlarge the overall raid storage by swapping out my 1Tb drives with 2Tb or larger as the need for more storage arises.
Any help would be greatly appreciated,
Thanks

You may be better of using Storage spaces and not using raid at all.
Robert Pearman SBS MVP
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What is the best RAID configuration for a MacPro as a Logic User?

There ought to be a universal answer to this question: what is the best RAID configuration for Logic Mac Pro users? I will be more specific.
I use Logic Studio, Reason, Ableton, and Motu Symphonic Instrument simultaneously.
I want to fail safe my precious audio files and improve performance as the system reads/writes data from multiple files, from audio tracks to digital samples.
I want to run video files simultaneously to do nifty audio soundtracking to video.
Here is the configuration I have in mind.
HD 1: OS and Logic Studio, Reason/Ableton samples etc. software (non-raid) (250 GB)
HD 2/3: MIrrored RAID set for AUDIO FILES (500 Gb identical pair)
HD 4: Video files / Bouncing (1 TB)
Makes sense right? A disk for reading software. A pair of 500 GB disks for reading/writing audio files and sessions in mirrored array. A 1 TB disk for video and bouncing. The main question I have is, for audio files only, is striped or mirrored better? 64K blocks the best? And are there any more details. I assume to do this in Disk Utility.

Well, both Mirrored and Striped have their pros and cons. If you use mirrored, it will offer no better performance than the spec'ed drive along with it's sata bus speed. The plus point is, if one drive goes down, you have the second as a backup as the complete contents of one drive are mirrored on the other.
With striped you will get a performance boost because all files (for example a single project) will get written across both drives and hence split the load on the drives and the SATA busses. The drawback is that you'll have to make sure you have a good, regular backup schedule in place because when one of the drives goes to drive heaven, you're going to be stuffed without a full backup of both drives.
Exactly what performance boost you'd get will depend on your project, number of files, size of files, fragmentation of files, track count etc. You may find it would be easier to use the 3 drives straight, with no raid and have:
HD 1: OS and Apps. No samples at all.
HD2: Audio Files for Logic projects
HD3: Reason, Ableton, Logic etc instrument sample library
HD4: Video and bouncing.
Which is what I ended up doing although I use HD4 as an interchangeable backup for HD1 and 2.
There is no universal answer to this as each must make their own choice based on their preferences and needs. Mirrored will give you full backup but on-site, in machine backup. Not much good if something untoward and drastic happens to the physical machine. I think a few people toy with striped RAID but fall on the side of using the drives straight, as in their projects they don't see a big enough gain over splitting the data across your 3 remaining drives without RAID. Studios that seriously consider raid often go out and get a dedicated raid that can offer more variations than raid 0 or raid 1 (Striped and Mirrored) and better throughput.
I hope this helps a little and not just added to the dilemma.

Which RAID Configuration for my WD "My Book Mirror Edition"?

About to reformat my WD "My Book Mirror Edition" to use on my iMac. I hope to also install on my iMac "Virtual Box", "VM Fusion", or "Parallels" and then run a few windows products. Which RAID configuration should I choose in the WD "drive configurations" box?

If I were you I'd run any Virtual Machine directly on your iMac, not on a "WD My Book Mirror Edition", in particular not when connected through USB 2.0.
To store data, the WD is fine.
For the RAID options:
RAID 0 ("striping") : if you want something fast (insofar this is possible with a USB connection). Note that when one of your disks fails you can say goodbye to all your data.
RAID 1 ("mirroring"): more safe. If one disk fails, the data are recoverable as they are on the other disk as well. Disadvantage is you get only half the storage capacity compared to RAID 0.
Oh. my personal recommendation: RAID 1 is not an alternative to making a backup. So whatever option you choose: if you store valuable data on the disk that are nowehere else: back them up!
On formats:
HFS+ : definitely recommended if you only use the RAID array on the Mac.
FAT 32: if you also use it on a Windows machine. Note that files cannot be larger than 4 GB in this case.
Hope this helps.
Eric

RAID configurations for RHEL partition

We have RHEL 5.x in our production environment using VMware which is configured on RAID using RAID 1, RAID 5 & RAID 10. I had couple of queries with RAID configuration:
1) Is it possible for a RHEL partition to have 2 RAID configurations, like some part of partition on RAID 1 and the remaining on RAID 5?
2) How to identify the RAID configurations used by a RHEL partition.
I hope, I have been able to explain the problem.
Requesting a reply to my query.
Regards

1) Is it possible for a RHEL partition to have 2 RAID configurations, like some part of partition on RAID 1 and the remaining on RAID 5?
No. RAID configurations work on the block level and do not use logical partitions. You can however partition a RAID volume.
2) How to identify the RAID configurations used by a RHEL partition.
Depends what you are using. If you have a hardware RAID, it is transparent to the OS and cannot be seen without using any hardware specific host adapter utilities. If it is software, it depends on mdadm, LVM or BTRFS. What are you using?
P.S. you will most likely do not want to use RAID 5 unless you have special hardware controller to deal with RAID 5 checksums, etc. It's definitely not a solution for large storage, since it will take days to rebuild in case of a failure.

Best RAID configuration for storing Datafiles and Redo log files

Database version:10gR2
OS version: Solaris
Whis is the best RAID level for storing Datafiles and Redo log files?

Oracle recommends SAME - Stripe And Mirror Everything.
In the RAC Starter Kit documentation, they specifically recommend not using RAID5 for things like voting disk and so on.
SAN vendors otoh claims that their RAID5 implementations are as fast as RAID10. They do have these massive memory caches...
But I would rather err on the safer side. I usually insist on RAID10 - and for those databases that I do not have a vested interest in (other than as a DBA), and owners, developers and management accept RAID5, I put the lead pipe away and do not insist on having it my way. :-)

X4500 RAID Configuration for best performance for video storage

Hello all:
Our company is working with a local university to deploy IP video security cameras. The university has an X4500 Thumper that they would like to use for the storage of the video archives. The video management software (VMS) will run on an Intel based server with Windows 2003 server as the OS and connect to the Thumper via iSCSI. The VMS manages the permissions, schedules and other features of the cameras and records all video on the local drives until the scheduled archive time. When the archive time occurs, the VMS transfers the video to the Thumper for long term storage. It is our understanding that when using iSCSI and Windows OS there is a 2TB limit for the storage space - so we will divide the pool into several 2TB segments.
The question is: Given this configuration, what RAID level (0, 1, Z or Z2) will provide the highest level of data protection without comprimising performance to a level that would be noticable? We are not writing the video directly to the Thumper, we are transferring it from the drives of the Windows server to the Thumper, and we need that transfer to be very fast - since the VMS stops recording during the archiving and restarts when complete, creating down time for the cameras.
Any advice would be appreciated.

I'd put as many disks as possible into a RAID 5 (striping) set. This will provide the highest level of performance, with the ability to sustain a single disk failure.
With striping, some data is written to all the disks in the stripe set. So, if you have 10 disks in the set, then instead of writing data to a single disk, which is slow, 1/10th of the data is written to each disk simultaneously, which is very fast. In effect, the more disks you write to, the faster the operation completes.

Best practice RAID configuration for UCS C260 M2 for Unified Communications?

I have two UCS C260 M2 servers with 16 drives (PID: C260-BASE-2646) and I am trying to figure out what the best practice is for setting up the RAID.
I will be running CUCM, CUP, CUC, Prime, etc. for about 2000 phone environment.
If anyone can offer real world suggestions that would be great. I also have a redundnat server.

The RAID setup depends a bit on your specific configuration; however, there is a guide for Cisco Collaboration on Virtual Servers that you can review here:
http://www.cisco.com/c/en/us/td/docs/voice_ip_comm/cucm/virtual/CUCM_BK_CF3D71B4_00_cucm_virtual_servers/CUCM_BK_CF3D71B4_00_cucm_virtual_servers_chapter_010.html#CUCM_TK_C3AD2645_00
If your server is spec'd as a Tested Reference Configuration (TRC) then the C260M2 TRC1 would have 16 HDD that you would configure/split into 2 x 8HDD RAID 5 arrays.
Hailey
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Best RAID configuration for combining external thunderbolt enclosures?

I'm looking at configuring two external Western Digital Thunderbolt Duo drive enclosures using Disk Utility's software RAID setup tool. Each enclosure houses two 2TB drives. I'm looking to get the performance of RAID 0 striping with the redundancy of RAID 1 mirroring. What I'm not sure of, and I hope someone can shed some light on, is how to combine the RAID sets to achieve my desired goal. As I see it, there are two possible ways to go about this.
The first would be to configure the master RAID set as mirrored, with the individual thunderbolt enclosures configured as striped sets. Example:
The second approach would be to configure the master RAID set as striped, with the individual thunderbolt enclosures configured as mirrored set. Example:
Can anyone tell me which is the better way to go about this? Are there advantages/disadvantages to either approach? Thanks for any insight you might have!

Start here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RAID
see the heading Nested (hybrid) RAID
The issue with striped RAID is that loss of one drive is devastating. Lose one drive and you lose it ALL.
They advocate you make a striped set of Mirrored drives. One failure and you're fine, as long as you don't have another failure before you fix it.
NB> RAID is not Backup -- you still need a backup.

Changing Raid configuration

we have changed the Raid 1 to a non-Raid configuration for testing purposes. Now we wanted to set the Raid 1 again in the configuration menu of the LSI Controller. But there it says, that all data will be erased. Isn't it possible to set one HDD as the primary HDD and mirror the data to the other HDD (this way is possible with server controllers)? If this isn't possible, how can I get the Raid 1 back, without losing Data and the Service partition... Perhabps creating Rescue and Recovery cds?
Thanks
Regards,
Christof

are you sure your primary drive was released from the array topography? it sounds like something is still being flagged as being part of an array.
if that's no help, try this:
- physically unplug both drives from your system
- boot into the LSI BIOS
- delete the old array
- turn off the system
- plug the primary drive back in
- boot into windows
- plug in the second drive
- set it to 'online' in disk management
- run MSM and see if it will let you create an array
somewhere along the way you might have to delete the LSI array from the boot menu in the D10 BIOS and re-enable it.
my gut feeling is that something is still flagged somewhere and needs to be unflagged for this to work.
ThinkStation C20
ThinkPad X1C · X220 · X60T · s30 · 600

Installing Arch on a RAID (for dummies)

Playing with RAID's is fun for all the family, and makes things go faster.
this is how I (re)installed Arch Linux, in a simple RAID configuration.
Ingredients
===========
1. Two 160GB drives
2. Arch Linux CD (Dont Panic)
Planning
========
1. root partition on a RAID 1 setup (mirroring)
2. home partition on a RAID 0 setup (striping)
3. swap partition on a RAID 0 setup (striping)
in this kinda setup, one disk can fry, but the system will still boot and function normally.
home will be lost for ever, but I always back it up anyway (and so should you).
*Important* - make sure your two IDE drives are not connected to the same cable, setup one as a primary master and the second as a secondary master.
The works
=========
1. Boot the machine using the setup CD.
2. Using cfdisk, partition the two drives exactly the same:
Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/sda1 * 1 4863 39062016 83 Linux
/dev/sda2 4864 17021 97659135 83 Linux
/dev/sda3 17022 17083 498015 82 Linux swap / Solaris
I chose 40GB for root, 100GB for home (results in 200GB), and 1GB for swap.
Do exactly the same on the second drive /dev/sdb
3. create the RAIDs using mdadm:
modprob raid1
modprob raid0
mdadm --create /dev/md0 --level=1 --raid-devices=2 /dev/sda1 /dev/sdb1
mdadm --create /dev/md1 --level=0 --raid-devices=2 /dev/sda2 /dev/sdb2
mdadm --create /dev/md2 --level=0 --raid-devices=2 /dev/sda3 /dev/sdb3
4. create filesystems on the partitions:
mkfs.xfs /dev/md0
mkfs.xfs /dev/md1
mkswap /dev/md2
5. mount the root partition on /mnt
mount /dev/md0 /mnt
6. start the setup program
/arch/setup
7. select all base packages
8. install packages
9. configure:
choose configure system and then, edit mkinitcpio.conf modules section:
MODULES="ata_generic ata_piix raid1 raid0 xfs"
In this line, I only added "raid1 raid0 xfs" to the modules.
then, edit mkinitcpio.conf hooks section, and add the RAID stuff after that:
HOOKS="base udev raid autodetect pata scsi sata usbinput keymap filesystems"
md=0,/dev/sda1,/dev/sdb1
md=1,/dev/sda2,/dev/sdb2
md=2,/dev/sda3,/dev/sdb3
In the hooks line, I have added the raid hook before autodetect
10. install the kernel
choose install kernel from the menu.
11. Install grub
choose install bootloader then grub
edit the grub entry to:
# (0) Arch Linux
title Arch Linux [/boot/vmlinuz26]
root (hd0,0)
kernel /boot/vmlinuz26 root=/dev/md0 ro md=0,/dev/sda1,/dev/sdb1
initrd /boot/kernel26.img
install grub to /dev/sda
when prompted about root partition choose /dev/sda1
when prompted about RAID stuff choose no
do exactly the same on /dev/sdb
12. exit the setup program
13. fix mdadm.conf
mdadm -D --scan >>/mnt/etc/mdadm.conf
14. fix fstab
add this to /mnt/etc/fstab:
/dev/md0 / xfs defaults 0 0
/dev/md1 /home xfs defaults 0 0
/dev/md2 swap swap defaults 0 0
15. reboot and install the rest of the system
16. make sure all is well:
cat /proc/mdstat
Personalities : [raid1] [raid0] [linear] [multipath] [raid6] [raid5] [raid4] [raid10]
md2 : active raid0 sda3[0] sdb3[1]
995840 blocks 64k chunks
md1 : active raid0 sda2[0] sdb2[1]
195318016 blocks 64k chunks
md0 : active raid1 sdb1[1] sda1[0]
39061952 blocks [2/2] [UU]
mount
/dev/md0 on / type xfs (rw)
/dev/md1 on /home type xfs (rw)
make sure swap is on:
cat /proc/swaps
Filename Type Size Used Priority
/dev/md2 partition 995832 0 -1
17. If things go wrong, you can reassemble the RAIDs after booting from the setup CD, dont recreate them:
mdadm --reassemble /dev/md0 /dev/sda1 /dev/sdb1
for more reading, consult the WIKI: http://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Ins … AID_or_LVM
Last edited by daf666 (2008-03-08 20:36:42)

Sorry for the late reply clickit, I guess you might have fixed it already.
There is a mistake in the guide, I will correct it now, the types in these lines should be --level=0
mdadm --create /dev/md1 --level=1 --raid-devices=2 /dev/sda2 /dev/sdb2
mdadm --create /dev/md2 --level=1 --raid-devices=2 /dev/sda3 /dev/sdb3
Very sorry about that, but that does not cause your problem, because it would have created a mirror RAID instaed of a stripe.
Your BIOS has nothing to do with the Linux software RAID, the RAID settings you see in BIOS are probably to enable the on-board RAID controller you have.
The grub part is tricky, you have to make sure whats in the configuration file is according to the setup that you have (not just copy from the guide).
Also keep in mind that if you have SATA, things might look different and the setup might need to be different.
PS - regarding swap, since I wrote the guide I removed the swap space and instead I use a swap file on the RAID0.. I guess it the same because my system rarely uses swap anyway
Last edited by daf666 (2007-10-17 21:31:59)

RAID Configuration Utility for KZPSC-XB in Alpha 2100

I have an Alphaserver 2100 and need to replace the RAID card KZPSC-XB. I believe I will need a diskette with the RAID Configuration Utility software on it to setup the RAID. The system is old, and I can not locate our original software.
Does anyone know where it can be located, downloaded, or a copy obtained?

Hi @rcyoung ,
Welcome to the HP forum!
To get your issue more exposure I would suggest posting it in the commercial forums since the Alpha Server is a commercial product. You can do this at Commercialforum/DiscussionBoards/server/alpha servers.
The support page for your product may be helpful in the meantime: AlphaServer 2100 Technical Resources.
I hope this helps.
Sparkles1
I work on behalf of HP
Please click “Accept as Solution ” if you feel my post solved your issue, it will help others find the solution.
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UCS RAID Configuration on UCS C240 M3 TRC2 for UC Applications

Hi
This UCS server has Twelve 300 GB hard disk. The RAID configuration recommended in Cisco Documentation is to have 2 RAID 5 Volumes 1.36 TB each.
I don't understand this configuration for the following reasons :
I prefer to dedicate a RAID Volume to ESXi and the second RAID Volume for UC Application.
For UCS C240 M3 TRC3 the First RAID volume should be a small size (for Example 300 GB with RAID1 ) and the second one about 2 TB with RAID 5
Why ?
Because in case of problem with ESXi, I can reinstall ESXi, and to recover all My UC applications after ESXi reinstallation.
This kind of configuration was the one use by old C210 M2 (Small RAID 1 volume for ESXi and Larger RAID 5 Volume for UC Applications)
The problem is that with two 1.36 TB Volume , I can install ESXi on the first RAID Volume and UC on second RAID volume. But there is a big waste of Disk Space (about 1 TB )!!!
The problem of changing this RAID recommended Configuration is that TAC consider that we are no longer running on TRC design, so the support is able to be rejected.
Is anybody from Cisco able to explain me the reasons for such RAID Design for UCS C240 M3 TRC2 for UC Applications
Thanks

You need to go thru your AM, or ask in a partner forum this question, this cannot be addressed at CSC.
And we didn't tell you support would be rejected, we told you that support would fall from a guaranteed performance UC on UCS TRC, to that of a UC on UCS spec based, as changing the RAID would be guidance-only.

TRIM does not work for SSD in a RAID configuration

According to Intel, SSDs that are used in a RAID configuration cannot use the TRIM function in Windows 7. This would seem to lead to an eventual degradation of those RAID SSD configurations. Is there any work ongoing to enable TRIM in the future?
"....Intel later clarified that TRIM was supported for the BIOS settings of AHCI mode and RAID mode, but not if the drive was part of a RAID volume.[16]..."
W520, i7-2820QM, BIOS 1.42, 1920x1080 FHD, 32 GB RAM, 2000M NVIDIA GPU, Samsung 850 Pro 1TB SSD, Crucial M550 mSata 512GB, WD 2TB USB 3.0, eSata Plextor PX-LB950UE BluRay
W520, i7-2760QM, BIOS 1.42 1920x1080 FHD, 32 GB RAM, 1000M NVIDIA GPU, Crucial M500 480GB mSata SSD, Hitachi 500GB HDD, WD 2TB USB 3.0
Solved!
Go to Solution.

The performance hit would only be on the write side of the equation. If the garbage collection of these SSD drives is sufficient, I wonder why TRIM exists? I'm posting an excerpt from Wikipedia on the subject below:
"All SSDs have garbage collection. That is a function of NAND flash memory used in SSDs. Some drives may be more efficient at GC than others. Some do not recover as well as others after they have been used for a period of time. Some drives perform GC in the background when the drive is otherwise not busy with user data (idle), but there are some drawbacks to that background operation (you can see the wikipedia article for more details). In general background GC is not good for the endurance of the drive because it moves data that the OS (and user) may delete and render unnecessary to GC in the first place. The best solution is to do it on the fly as fast as possible.
TRIM is a command sent by the OS to the drive identifying the actual logical block addresses (LBAs) that are no longer needed. To understand TRIM you must understand how the OS and SSD tracks the data. When you put an item in the OS trash you are not actually deleting the items. They are just marked ready for deletion. If the user says to empty the trash, the OS notes this and now says those LBAs are free to accept new data. This is true for all storage devices, not just SSDs. Many people do not realize that the storage device does not actually delete the data at that point. The act of erasing a file is simply the OS marking its internal lookup tables for that file as free to store new information. An HDD still has the data on the drive at that location until the OS writes something new into that spot. For an SSD it is the same; the SSD still has the data in the flash at that location until the OS writes something new into that spot. Of course the NAND flash memory requires the replacement data to be written into a new location and the old data is marked as "invalid" now. Then during garbage collection that invalid data is NOT moved with other valid data in that block to a new block.
The performance of an SSD is at its peak when it is brand new out of the box because there is nothing to GC. Unfortunately this occurs only at the beginning of the drive's life or after you secure erase the drive and start over. Performance is also affected by the size of the over provisioning (OP) (details also in the wikipedia article above). During GC if the drive does not have to move around as much data it can operate faster. The TRIM command enables the OS to tell the SSD what LBAs are no longer valid data. Without the TRIM command this only happens when the OS tries to write something new into that same spot or it tries to replace the current data. If the SSD knew in advance that some of the LBAs holding data were invalid the drive would not move that data during GC. The effect gets you closer to the performance of a drive with larger OP. Without the TRIM command the drive will perform like it is at full capacity at all times and only has the amount of OP set at the factory (plus any space left unused during the partition process when first setting up the drive)."
W520, i7-2820QM, BIOS 1.42, 1920x1080 FHD, 32 GB RAM, 2000M NVIDIA GPU, Samsung 850 Pro 1TB SSD, Crucial M550 mSata 512GB, WD 2TB USB 3.0, eSata Plextor PX-LB950UE BluRay
W520, i7-2760QM, BIOS 1.42 1920x1080 FHD, 32 GB RAM, 1000M NVIDIA GPU, Crucial M500 480GB mSata SSD, Hitachi 500GB HDD, WD 2TB USB 3.0

Raid configurations for dummies...hmm

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