Storage Solutions RAID 0 & SPAN query

nRiTeCh

nRiTeCh

Skilled
In my company, we just have to combine all unused hard drives as a 1 single drive.
We got 2tb*4 hard drives. = 8tb.

What we need is to create 1 single drive off all these hard drives and use it on old Intel xeon server.

Main query:
  1. Can we create raid 0 or span during OS installation and thus install OS on that raid 0/span and then use the same volume for data?
  2. Or I will create a 100gb partition for OS/boot on 1st harddrive but then its remaining 1.9tb should be able to merge as raid 0/span with rest of 3 hard drives. So is that possible?


**Please dont suggest raid1 or raid5 as we already have dedicated setup having it.
 
If you have hardware raid 0 then you can go with option 1 where OS installer will see only one hdd of 8TB for installation.

Not all OSes support booting for software raid. So if you plan to use software raid 0 then go with option 2 of creating boot partition on hdd1 and use rest of space as another partition which will become part of raid 0 span.

Which OS are you planning to install? Recently we had SLES12 installed with software raid 0 and option 1 and it worked fine. Not sure if Windows supports such scenario.
 
Server 2k12 standard.
What I"m worried is I dont wanna waste 1.9tb off the 2tb drive. I want to merge that 1.9tb after allocating 100gb to OS with the other 6tb drives. So it should be (7.9tb overall either on Raid 0 or span whichever possible)

If thats possible it will make my job very easy.

So let me know accordingly.
 
I just tried software raid 0 with Windows 2012 and booting from dynamic disk is working.

Trick is that you need to install Windows as usual and then convert all hdds to dynamic after installation is finished.

upload_2015-12-29_22-11-46.png
 
There are different solutions to this problem, but, I think the best you should do is go with Storage Spaces in Windows Server. This will allow you to do a sort of RAID1 or JBOD.
 
kekerode said:
I just tried software raid 0 with Windows 2012 and booting from dynamic disk is working.

Trick is that you need to install Windows as usual and then convert all hdds to dynamic after installation is finished.

View attachment 62023
Click to expand...

So here you first installed windows by creating partition. Then you spanned the remaining leftover unused space with the other hard drive, right??
Cool!! If this is possible then nothing like this.
 
nRiTeCh said:
So here you first installed windows by creating partition. Then you spanned the remaining leftover unused space with the other hard drive, right??
Cool!! If this is possible then nothing like this.
Click to expand...
That's correct. First install windows as usual and then convert all disks to dynamic including OS disk. Once done, you can do partitioning as you want.
 
I already done my setup that day itself.

Span is risky so cant merge with OS disk coz if something goes wrong with OS and if we ever need to format or worst if the disk goes bad.
So what I did is allotted separate HDD for only the OS (500gb).
Did spanning on the other 8TB.

Alls set!
 
nRiTeCh said:
I already done my setup that day itself.

Span is risky so cant merge with OS disk coz if something goes wrong with OS and if we ever need to format or worst if the disk goes bad.
So what I did is allotted separate HDD for only the OS (500gb).
Did spanning on the other 8TB.

Alls set!
Click to expand...

And that is exactly how you should do it.
 
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