I have some RAID experience but need a bit of help here. I have a server I have setup for a DBMS. The DBMS requires separate partitions or file systems for performance. The server has 16 drives on two controllers. I have the 3 drives (RAID5 via the HP software) for OS, 5 drives (RAID0 via the HP software) for a temp/work area, and the 8 drives on the other controller (RAID5 via the HP controller) for data.

How can I map partitions to the individual disks? I understand I need 3 drives min for RAID5...so I guess I could have two RAID5 devices out of my 8 disks if I go through the HP controller...but is there a way to create multiple partitions (one per disk) on top of the RAID5 logical volume that map to the individual disks?

So, I have a device for all 8 drives (/dev/cciss/c0d1). How can I create 8 partitions that map directly to the 8 disks?

It seems like I could use fdisk on the device (8 drives) and setup 8 logical partitions, right?

The short answer is no, you can't target the individual disks once you've made them members of a raid set.

You don't need to create 1 partition per disk, the RAID makes the multiple drives look like a single disk to the system. So just create the partitions exactly like you would if you had one big drive. Don't worry about trying to match partitions to drives as the system won't know the difference anyway.