Hi, I am new to the raid.we have HP proliant ML570. we have 6 scsi disk attached with it.each disk has 170GB hard disk. we have to install os in one scsi disk.in remaining harddisk into configure as raid.what is the procedure. can you tell how to do hardwared based raid please its urgent Thanks in advance

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RAID

I have a Compaq ML370 (which is similar to yours) on which I have hardware RAID 5 and an install of slackware. The Compaq Smart Array 5xxx kernel option must be selected (mine is a 5300) and once the RAID array has been setup with the compaq RAID utility the drive appears as /dev/cciss/c0d0p.

Hi Dave, how do you configure raid 5 on your system. can you tell the step by step configuration thanks in advance

It was a long time since I installed that server and it is in production and therefore cannot be rebooted for me to double-check the actual procedure. From memory I entered the BIOS of the on-board hardware RAID adapter and configured the drives from there, a bit like going into the BIOS of a SCSI card....it should say something like "press Ctrl&A to enter setup". Although that message may have been disabled you should still be able to get in there with the correct key combination, try checking the HP/Compaq website. If that is incorrect I think the server may have shipped with a bootable CD which can do the same job, it was approx 3 years ago since I did it! Once the array was set up the drives just appeared to the OS as one large one, from there I could partition and format it during the slackware installation.

Hi, i dont have any idea about it. i hav smart cd. can i boot using that cd please can you tell the steps to do thanks in advance

What Generation? On newer generations you can hit F9 or F10 when it's say press F9 or F10 to configure the smart array. Obviously, you cannot create an array with drives where there is data you want on the array, the firmware formats with HP/COMPAQ's information, but if you have already set up your system partition in an array that's working or on a single disk or a separate device you can use the boot prompt or boot off the smart start to create a raid 1+0, 5 array for your data partition. HP smart start is one of the easiest configured raid controllers out there, and any late release Linux Distro will automatically support the the smart array series with a built in kernel module. Stop being lazy and do 15 mins of research and you wouldn't have any troubles at all. 95% of all computer techs don't know crap, and 99.5% of computer techs think they know everything.