Asus NCCH-DL Disk Array & Driver Installation Guide English Version - Page 4

1. RAID configurations The server system/motherboard comes with the following RAID solutions: • A d a p t e c® HostRAID™ technology embedded in the Intel® 6300ESB Southbridge supports up to two SATA hard disk drives and RAID 0, 1, and JBOD configurations. • P r o m i s e® PDC20319 SATA RAID controller supports up to four SATA hard disk drives and RAID 0, 1, and 0+1 configurations. Refer to the RAID definitions below. 1.1 RAID definitions R A I D 0 (Data striping) optimizes two identical hard disk drives to read and write data in parallel, interleaved stacks. Two hard disks perform the same work as a single drive but at a sustained data transfer rate, double that of a single disk alone, thus improving data access and storage. Use of two new identical hard disk drives is required for this setup. RAID 1 (Data mirroring) copies and maintains an identical image of data from one drive to a second drive. If one drive fails, the disk array management software directs all applications to the surviving drive as it contains a complete copy of the data in the other drive. This RAID configuration provides data protection and increases fault tolerance to the entire system. Use two new drives or use an existing drive and a new drive for this setup. The new drive must be of the same size or larger than the existing drive. R A I D 0 + 1 is data striping and data mirroring combined without parity (redundancy data) having to be calculated and written. With the RAID 0+1 configuration you get all the benefits of both RAID 0 and RAID 1 configurations. Use four new hard disk drives or use an existing drive and three new drives for this setup. J B O D (Spanning) stands for J u s t a B u n c h o f D i s k s and refers to hard disk drives that are not yet configured as a RAID set. This configuration stores the same data redundantly on multiple disks that appear as a single disk on the operating system. Spanning does not deliver any advantage over using separate disks independently and does not provide fault tolerance or other RAID performance benefits. If you want to boot the system from a hard disk drive included in a created RAID set, copy first the RAID driver from the support CD to a floppy disk before you install an operating system to the selected hard disk drive. Refer to section "2. RAID driver installation" for details. 4 RAID configuration and driver installation