[plug] Good RAID Howto

[Kai Jones]

Thanks Ben,

If it's easier creating new partitions than adding to the existing array 
I might do that 'cause it doesn't matter as long as we don't loose any 
files, I'll give it a go and post here with feedback soon.

Cheers
Kai

Ben Jensz wrote:
> With the MegaRAID cards (thats what you've got isn't it?) you can expand 
> the RAID5 array whilst it's online.  It will take a while to do 
> (especially with the default priority) - meaning it could easily take a 
> day or so.  BUT, you have to do it with the Global Array Manager 
> software from LSI Logic, you can't do it from the BIOS interface.  So 
> you'll have to install the server software for that on Linux, and then 
> install the client software on a Windows box to connect to it and manage 
> it.
> 
> You will have to reboot the box for the OS to see the increased size of 
> the "physical" disk it sees (i.e. the RAID5 array) more than likely.  
> Then you can resize the filesystem, but you MUST umount it to do this.  
> Depending on how you've got the disk configuration setup, and which 
> partition you want to resize... it may not be easily possible to resize 
> it though.  You may just have to create new partitions, which you could 
> mount under particular large group shares depending on where your disk 
> usage is going etc. obviously.
> 
> HTH. :)
> 
> 
> / Ben
> 
> 
> Kai Jones wrote:
> 
>> OK, forgot all that...yesterday arvo I told everyone to go home a bit 
>> early, rebooted the file server and had a look. We're running RAID5 
>> across three disks and the hardware RAID config only allows two 
>> options, RAID5 or RAID0. So much for having ideas about using RAID 1 
>> on the new disks.
>>
>> As mentioned before, although I understand the principle of RAID I've 
>> never configured it before, last night's look at the hardware RAID 
>> config menu's didn't look all that friendly.
>>
>> The RAID config see's the new disks as being in the READY state but 
>> I'd have to initialise them, format them (?) and allocate them as 
>> RAID5 from RAID BIOS to have them available to play with using mdadm 
>> once in CLI ?
>>
>> Any feedback is appreciated !
>>
>> Thanks
>> Kai