Creating software raid5 array under opensuse 11.1

tkm · 12-26-2008, 09:49 AM

Hello All,

I've build a new machine together.
First the hardware (that seems to be important):

Motherboard: GA-EP45-UD3R
CPU :Quad Core Intel Processor Q9550
Memory: 8Gb RAM
Harddisks: 5 x Samsung spinpoint F1 1TB disks

Motherboard includes a ICH10R chip.

I want to use the machine as 64 bit linux File & database server.

Downloaded opensuse 11.1 64 bit.

I read in a magazine that it is more sensible to make a software raid because HostRaid has some problems like data inconsistency and losing data.

When i try to create a RAID volume in the instalation wizard of opensuse it sais: 'There are not enough suitable unused devices to create a RAID'.

I changed in the bios the so the harddisk controller works in AHCI mode not in RAID mode. Thought that RAID is for HostRaid.

I can't get the Expert Partitioner to create a RAID volume.
Any thoughts on how to do this?

Regards,

Theo

tkm · 01-02-2009, 06:08 AM

Got it working,

Played around found it:
First : Make raid raid partitions for at least /boot and /, just give them the size you want. and tel the partitioner that these are raid partitions. Don't try to mount them yet.
Do this for all the disks you have.

I made partitions:

100 MB raid
100 GB raid
780 GB raid
51 GB swap

This for all 5 disks

Then i clicked on the RAID icon in the tree view
clicked on ADD and saw all new partition not mounted.
gathered all 100MB partitions of all disks made a RAID1 volume and mounted it to /boot.
gathered all 100GB partitions, made RAID5 volume & mounted it to /home
same for 780 GB RAID5 mounted to /

when finished it ran the installation without a hitch.

Thanks for all the reply's
this question can be closed.

Regards,

Theo

jonfleck · 09-29-2009, 01:16 AM

I've come across a couple of posts on different forums with people having trouble setting up RAID arrays. So for future reference to anybody who visits this thread here's a tutorial on how to setup RAID 0, 1 or 5 under LVM in OpenSUSE 11.1. I would recommend to anybody that is setting up RAID to do so as a logical volume. This is nice as it will allow you to have extreme flexibility when it comes to expanding storage. BTW, I did this tutorial with GNOME, so if you're using KDE it might look slightly different. I'm pretty new to Linux and I know that a tutorial like this one would have been a great help a couple of weeks ago when I was setting up my home media server.