Performance Support

Storage: Creating a RAID Group

TranscriptIn order to create a RAID Group, the server must have access to a RAID Controller and hard drives.

RAID Controller Cards are used to connect multiple disk drives together into disk arrays. In some cases the disks are installed locally into the server, and in other case…cases the disks can be installed into an external chassis and connected via an external cable from the RAID Controller to the disk chassis. We then use the RAID Controller Card software to configure the RAID array. In preparation for this demonstration, a physical RAID Controller has been installed into the expansion slot of a physical server. Once the card is installed and the disk drives are attached to the RAID Controller we power on the physical server.

For our demonstration here, we'll be using an HP server that has an HP Smart Array P400 Smart Array Controller. This is the RAID Controller. While the server is booting you'll seen an option for starting the Array Configuration Utility. In this case we had to press the F2 key during the boot up sequence in the Array Configuration Utility was launched. Here we see the main options available to us from the Array Configuration Utility software. We can create a logical drive, view existing logical drives, or delete existing logical drives.

First let’s have a look at what’s configured on this server. So we can see that a RAID 1+0 group has been created as Logical Drive #1; the size is 136 gigabytes. If I click OK or hit the Enter key in this case we'll see some further details. We can see that this RAID array is actually made up of two physical drives, two SAS drives. These are internal disks inside the server. Let’s back out. By pressing the Esc key I can get back to the main menu. Now in this case I don’t want to delete the logical drive that’s already been created, but I want to see if we can create a new logical drive. When I select the Create Logical Drive menu item we'll see if there’s any additional drives available to us that are not in use.

So here, we see we have three available drives. They're all selected by default and on the right hand side of the configuration utility you can see that RAID 5 has been selected. Since RAID 5 does require three or more disks, I'm going to hit the space bar to deselect one of the drives in the available physical drive section. And you can see that the option for RAID configuration on the right hand side has now changed. I'll reselect that drive and the configuration utility automatically changes my selection back to RAID 5.

For our example here, I want to create a RAID array but I also want to assign a spare drive. So I'm going to deselect one of my drives, I'll use my Tab key to tab down to the spare section on the right hand side and hit my space bar again to designate one of the drives as a spare. You can see when I did that it selected the only drive that was left as a spare drive. Now I'm going to press Enter, create the logical drive as we've configured it, a two disk, RAID 1+0 with one drive designated as a spare. Press F8 to configure. And the Array Configuration Utility software completes. Now let’s go view the results.

There is our original drive, the RAID 1+0 that was created before we started, and the new logical Drive #2 created as a RAID 1+0 with an online spare. That’s how you create a RAID array. Thanks for watching.

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