How to configure RAID5

I. Overview

As you know, hardware RAID solutions are fast and stable, which can effectively provide high levels of hard disk availability and redundancy. But the high price is really daunting. Fortunately, Windows
2003 provides embedded software RAID functionality, and soft RAID can implement RAID-0, RAID-1, RAID-5. Soft RAID is not only very convenient to implement, but also saves a lot of valuable funds. It is indeed a very useful new feature of Windows Server 2003. A RAID-5 volume is a fault-tolerant volume where data and parity are intermittently distributed across three or more physical disks.

If a portion of the physical disk fails, we can recreate the data on the failed portion of the disk with the remaining data and parity. A RAID-5 volume is a good solution for data redundancy in a computer environment where most activities consist of reading data. A RAID-5 volume can be created using a hardware-based or software-based solution. With hardware-based RAID, the intelligent disk controller processes the creation and regeneration of redundant information on the disks that make up the RAID-5 volume.

Windows Server 2003 Family

Provides software-based RAID where the creation and re-generation of information on disks in a RAID-5 volume is handled by "Disk Management" In both cases, the data is stored across all members of the disk array. Of course, the performance and efficiency of soft RAID cannot be compared with hard RAID. Let's start with the creation of dynamic disks, then explain how to implement soft RAID in Windows 2003 Server implementation, and finally talk about the management of soft RAID.

Second, create a dynamic disk

When installing Windows 2003 Server, the hard disk will be automatically initialized to a basic disk. We cannot create new volume sets, stripe sets, or RAID-5 groups in a basic disk partition, but only create a similar disk configuration on a dynamic disk. That is, if you want to create a RAID-0, RAID-1, or RAID-5 volume, you must use a dynamic disk. After the Windows 2003 Server installation is complete, you can use the upgrade wizard to convert them to dynamic disks.

After converting a disk from a basic disk to a dynamic disk, the disk will contain the volume instead of the disk partition. Each of these volumes is a logical part of the hard drive and you can also assign a drive letter or mount point to each volume. However, be aware that you can only create volumes on dynamic disks. Dynamic disks have several features that are better than basic disks:

Volumes can be extended to include non-contiguous spaces that can be on any available disk.

There are no restrictions on the number of volumes that can be created on each disk.

Windows 2003 stores dynamic disk configuration information on disk instead of being stored in the registry or elsewhere. At the same time, this information cannot be accurately updated. Windows 2003 copies these disk configuration information to all other dynamic disks. Therefore, damage to a single disk will not affect access to data on other disks.

A hard disk can be either a basic disk or a dynamic disk, but not both, because multiple storage types cannot be combined on the same disk. However, if your computer has multiple hard drives, you can configure each drive to be basic or dynamic.

1. Upgrade from basic disk to dynamic disk:

1 Click “Start”->“All Programs>->“Administrative Tools”- >“Computer Management" option, display & "Computer Management" window.

2In the left pane, expand the “Storage”->“Disk Management" option to display all the disks installed on your computer.

3 Right-click the hard disk you want to set as the dynamic disk, and select the “Upgrade to Dynamic Disk” option in the pop-up shortcut menu to display the “Upgrade to Dynamic Disk” dialog box.

4Select the disk to be upgraded, and then click the “OK” button to display the “Disk to be upgraded” dialog box, where the user is required to upgrade the hard disk to be upgraded to a dynamic disk. confirm. The reason for this is simple because this upgrade is irreversible. That is, a basic disk can be upgraded to a dynamic disk, but a dynamic disk cannot be restored to a basic disk.

5 Click the “Upgrade” button to display the “Disk Management” prompt box. The system again asks the user to confirm the disk upgrade. When the disk is upgraded to a dynamic disk, Windows 98/Me and other operating systems will no longer be bootable from the disk.

6 Click the "Yes> button to display the “Upgrade Disk” warning box. Here, the file system on the disk that is prompted to be upgraded will be forcibly removed and the user will be asked to confirm the operation further.

7 Click the "yes" button and the system will begin the disk upgrade process. When the upgrade is complete, the “Confirm & rdquo; warning box will be displayed, click the "OK" button will restart the computer to complete the disk upgrade process.

There are several issues to be aware of when upgrading to dynamic disks:

You must be logged in as an administrator or a member of a management group to complete the process. If your computer is connected to a network, network policy settings may also prevent us from completing this step.

After upgrading a basic disk to a dynamic disk, you can no longer change the dynamic volume back to the basic partition. The only way to do this is to delete all dynamic volumes on the disk and then use the "Restore to Basic Disk" command.

Programs running on those disks should be closed before upgrading the disk.

To ensure a successful upgrade, any disk to be upgraded must contain at least 1MB of unallocated space. When creating a partition or volume on a disk, the Disk Management tool will automatically reserve this space, but there may not be this space on a disk with partitions or volumes created by other operating systems.

A disk with a sector size greater than 512 bytes cannot be upgraded from a basic disk to a dynamic disk.

Once the upgrade is complete, the dynamic disk cannot contain partitions or logical drives, nor can it be accessed by other operating systems other than Windows 2003.

2, set the new disk as a dynamic disk

1 After the computer installs a new hard disk, when accessing the "Disk Management" tool in the "Computer Management" for the first time, The "Write to Sign and Upgrade Disk Wizard" window will automatically run.

2Click the “Next” button to display the “Select disk to be written to” page, and select the disk to which you want to write the signature. It is important to note that the disk must be signed before it is installed on the system.

3 Click the “Next” button to display the “Select a disk to upgrade” page and select the disk to be upgraded to a dynamic disk.

4 Click the “Next” button to display the “Complete Write Signature and Upgrade Disk Wizard” page, where you will be asked to confirm the signed and upgraded disk. If anything is wrong, click the <;Previous” button to go back and re-set it.

5 Click the "Complete" button to complete the dynamic disk upgrade process.

Third, to achieve soft RAID

Soft RAID must also be implemented in a multi-disk system. A RAID-1 requires a minimum of two hard drives, while a RAID-5 requires a minimum of three hard drives. Normally, the disk where the operating system is located uses RAID-1, and the disk where the data resides is RAID-5.

1. Types of Volumes

1 Simple Volumes

A simple volume consists of disk space on a single physical disk, which can be linked together by a single area on the disk. Consists of multiple areas on the same disk. You can extend a simple volume on the same disk or extend a simple volume to another disk. If you extend a simple volume across multiple disks, the volume is a spanned volume.

You can only create simple volumes on dynamic disks. Simple volumes cannot contain partitions or logical drives, nor can they be accessed by other Windows operating systems than MS-DOS or Windows 2003. If the computers on your network are still running Windows 98 or earlier, you should create partitions instead of dynamic volumes.

If you want to increase the capacity of a simple volume after it has been created, you can extend the volume by the unallocated space remaining on the disk. To extend a simple volume, the volume must be formatted using the NTFS version used in Windows 2003. At the same time, it is not possible to extend a simple volume on the basic disk as a previous partition. You can also extend a simple volume to an area of ​​another disk on the same computer. When you extend a simple volume to one or more other disks, it becomes a spanned volume. After expanding a spanned volume, you cannot delete any part of it without deleting the entire spanned volume. Note that spanned volumes cannot be mirrored or striped.

2 strip volumes

With stripe volumes, you can make up the free space of two or more disks (up to 32 hard drives) into one volume. When writing data to a striped volume, the data is divided into 64KB blocks and distributed evenly across all the disks in the array. An array is a collection of two or more disks. Striped volumes can effectively improve the read performance of the disk, but it does not provide fault tolerance. Any damage to the hard disk will result in the loss of all data. A striped volume is similar to RAID-0.

3 spanning volumes

With spanning volumes, you can also make up free disk space from two or more disks (up to 32 hard drives) into one volume. Unlike stripe volumes, when writing data across a volume, first fill the free portion of the first disk, then write the data to the next disk, and so on. Although the use of spanning volumes can quickly increase the volume of a volume, spanning volumes can neither improve the read performance of disk data nor provide any fault tolerance. When a disk across a volume fails, all data stored on that disk will be lost.