[CentOS] Software RAID complete drives or individual partitions

Wed Mar 6 19:00:19 UTC 2013
Gordon Messmer <yinyang at eburg.com>

On 03/04/2013 07:53 PM, Chris Weisiger wrote:
>
> Currently I configured the complete individual drivers as software
> raid, then created a /dev/md0 with the drives

If you configure an entire drive as a raid device, you'd have a device 
name like /dev/mdp0, which you'd then partition.  I think what you've 
done is created only one partition per disk, and made those partitions 
into a RAID set.  That's not wrong, but it's not the same thing.

Non-partitionable RAID sets such as the one you've created are the most 
common configuration for software RAID.  Hardware RAID volumes are 
almost always the partionable type.

> Is the the proper way to configure software raid?

"Proper" is relative to its fitness for a specific purpose.  As you 
haven't indicated a specific purpose, "proper" doesn't have any real 
meaning.

The array you've created will work, and it will protect your data from 
loss due to the failure of a single disk.  You need to make sure your 
"root" mail is delivered to someone who will read it in a timely manner, 
or else that protection is not useful.  The array's performance will be 
relatively lower than a single-drive configuration or a RAID10 
configuration, but that may be acceptable for bulk storage.  The array 
will not protect you from filesystem corruption or from accidental 
deletion.  Subject to those and other limitations, your array seems more 
or less proper.