Configuring Raid - Lenovo ThinkStation P720 Hardware Maintenance Manual

Configuring RAID

This section provides information about storage drive requirements for RAID levels, and instructions on how
to configure RAID for your computer. Depending on your computer model and configuration, you can
configure RAID using one of the following utilities:
• Intel Rapid Storage Technology enterprise (RSTe) configuration utility
• AVAGO MegaRAID Configuration Utility
• Intel Virtual RAID on CPU configuration utility
An Introduction to RAID
RAID is a technology that provides increased storage functions and reliability through redundancy.
When a group of independent physical storage drives is set up to use RAID technology, they are in a RAID
array. This array distributes data across multiple storage drives, but the array appears to the host computer
as one single storage unit. Creating and using RAID arrays provides high performance, such as the expedited
I/O performance, because several drives can be accessed simultaneously.
RAID drive groups configured according to certain RAID levels also improve data storage reliability and fault
tolerance compared with single-drive storage systems. Data loss resulting from a drive failure can be
prevented by reconstructing missing data from the remaining drives.
Note: For RAID 0, the missing data resulting from a drive failure cannot be reconstructed.
Configuring RAID with Intel RSTe
If your computer comes with the Intel RSTe configuration utility, you can follow the sections below to
configure RAID with Intel RSTe.
Storage drive requirements for RAID levels
Your computer supports the following RAID levels:
• RAID 0: striped disk array
– Consists of at least two SATA storage drives
– Supported strip size: 4 KB, 8 KB, 16 KB, 32 KB, 64 KB, or 128 KB
– Better performance without fault tolerance
• RAID 1: mirrored disk array
– Consists of two SATA storage drives
– Improved reading performance and 100% redundancy
• RAID 10: striped and mirrored disk array (a combination of RAID 0 and RAID 1)
– Consists of four SATA storage drives
– Supported strip size: 4 KB, 8 KB, 16 KB, 32 KB, or 64 KB
• RAID 5: block-level striped disk array with distributed parity
– Consists of at least three SATA storage drives
– Supported strip size: 16 KB, 32 KB, 64 KB, or 128 KB
– Better performance and fault tolerance
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P720 Hardware Maintenance Manual