RAID technology is used to store data across a group of disks known as a disk array.
Depending on the RAID level selected, the technique of storing data across a group of disks provides the data redundancy required to keep data secure and the system operational. If a disk failure occurs, the disk can usually be replaced without interrupting normal system operation. Disk arrays also have the potential to provide higher data transfer and input and output (I/O) rates than those provided by single large disks.
Each disk array can be used by Linux® in the same way as it would a single SCSI disk. For example, after creating a disk array, you can use Linux commands to make the disk array available to the system by partitioning and creating file systems on it.
The SAS controller and I/O devices are managed by the iprconfig utility. The iprconfig utility is the interface to the RAID configuration, monitoring, and recovery features of the controller and I/O devices.
If a disk array is to be used as the boot device, it might be necessary to prepare the disks by booting into Rescue mode and creating the disk array before installing Linux. You might want to perform this procedure when the original boot drive is to be used as part of a disk array.
The following figure illustrates a possible disk array configuration.
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