Scenario—RAID-0 Volumes

RAID-0 volumes provide the fundamental building blocks for creating more complex storage configurations or for building mirrors. The following example, drawing on the scenario explained in Chapter 5, Configuring and Using Solaris Volume Manager (Scenario), describes how RAID-0 volumes can provide larger storage spaces and allow you to construct a mirror of existing file systems, including root (/).

The sample system in the scenario has a collection of relatively small (9 Gbyte) disks, but specific applications would likely require larger storage spaces. To create larger spaces (and improve performance), you can create a stripe that spans multiple disks. For example, each one of the following disks, c1t1d0, c1t2d0, c1t3d0, c2t1d0, c2t2d0, and c2t3d0, could be formatted with a slice 0 that spans the entire disk. Then, a stripe including all three of the disks from one controller could provide approximately 27 Gbytes of storage and allow faster access. The second stripe, from the second controller, could be used for redundancy, as described in Chapter 11, RAID-1 (Mirror) Volumes (Tasks) and specifically in the Scenario--RAID-1 Volumes (Mirrors).