How to Create a RAID 5 Volume

1. Check Prerequisites for Creating Solaris Volume Manager Components and Background Information for Creating RAID 5 Volumes.

2. To create the RAID 5 volume, use one of the following methods:

   • From the Enhanced Storage tool within the Solaris Management Console, open the Volumes node, then choose Action->Create Volume and follow the steps in the wizard. For more information, see the online help.

   • Use the following form of the metainit command:

     metainit name -r component component component

     • name is the name for the volume to create.

     • r specifies to create a RAID 5 volume.

     • component specifies a slice or soft partition to include in the RAID 5 volume.

     To specify an interlace value, add the -i interlace-value option. For more information, see the metainit(1M) man page.

Example—Creating a RAID 5 Volume of Three Slices

# metainit d45 -r c2t3d0s2 c3t0d0s2 c4t0d0s2
d45: RAID is setup

In this example, the RAID 5 volume d45 is created with the -r option from three slices. Because no interlace value is specified, d45 uses the default of 16 Kbytes. The system verifies that the RAID 5 volume has been set up, and begins initializing the volume.

You must wait for the initialization to finish before you can use the RAID 5 volume.

Where to Go From Here

To prepare the newly created RAID 5 volume for a file system, see “Creating File Systems (Tasks)” in System Administration Guide: Basic Administration. An application, such as a database, that uses the raw volume must have its own way of recognizing the volume.

To associate a hot spare pool with a RAID 5 volume, see How to Associate a Hot Spare Pool With a Volume.