How Does DiskSuite Manage Disks?

DiskSuite uses virtual disks to manage physical disks and their associated data. In DiskSuite, a virtual disk is called a metadevice.

A metadevice is functionally identical to a physical disk in the view of an application. DiskSuite converts I/O requests directed at a metadevice into I/O requests to the underlying member disks.

DiskSuite's metadevices are built from slices (disk partitions). An easy way to build metadevices is to use the graphical user interface, DiskSuite Tool, that comes with DiskSuite. DiskSuite Tool presents you with a view of all the slices available to you. By dragging slices onto metadevice objects, you can quickly assign slices to metadevices. You can also build and modify metadevices using DiskSuite's command line utilities.

If, for example, you want to create more storage capacity, you could use DiskSuite to make the system treat a collection of many small slices as one larger slice or device. After you have created a large metadevice from these slices, you can immediately begin using it just as any "real" slice or device.

For a more detailed discussion of metadevices, see "Metadevices".

DiskSuite can increase the reliability and availability of data by using mirrors (copied data) and RAID5 metadevices. DiskSuite`s hot spares can provide another level of data availability for mirrors and RAID5 metadevices.

Once you have set up your configuration, you can use DiskSuite Tool to report on its operation. You can also use DiskSuite`s SNMP trap generating daemon to work with a network monitoring console to automatically receive DiskSuite error messages.