Software RAID 0 configuration in RHEL using LVM2

hkapri1 · 05-30-2009, 05:47 AM

Hi all,
I have set up RHEL with single hard drive initially.But now i have installed new 5-hard drives of 1TB each.I have set it up as RAID 0 -Hardware RAID.The problem is linux detects and shows all hard drives as independent separate HDDS.
I want to use LVM2 for software RAID 0 to show all hard drive volumes as single hard drives..
could you please help me with this....

rayfordj · 05-30-2009, 10:50 AM

Welcome to LQ!

In the past what I have done is created an md raid0 and then used the md device as a pv for the vg where i create lv. If you are not wanting to do that, this article discusses using just LVM to stripe (raid0) an LV across multiple PVs.

How do I create a logical volume using Logical Volume Manager (LVM) post installation?

assuming the 5 1TB drives you added are sd[bcdef]
reading that article, it looks that you would, for example, then perform

Code:

pvcreate /dev/sd[bcdef]1
vgcreate BigVG /dev/sd[bcdef]1
lvcreate -l 100%VG -n BigLV -i 5 BigVG

then make your filesystem on /dev/BigVG/BigLV, mount it and go

You should also be aware of filesystem limitations from RedHat RHEL. I do not think this will be a concern or problem immediately for you (with RHEL4 or RHEL5) since you are only using ~5TB but should be taken into consideration should you decide to add additional capacity and grow the LV and filesystem later on.

hkapri1 · 05-31-2009, 01:35 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by hkapri1

Hi all,
I have set up RHEL with single hard drive initially.But now i have installed new 5-hard drives of 1TB each.I have set it up as RAID 0 -Hardware RAID.The problem is linux detects and shows all hard drives as independent separate HDDS.
I want to use LVM2 for software RAID 0 to show all hard drive volumes as single hard drives..
could you please help me with this....

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Thanks a lot, I will try the steps mentioned and will hope for the best..