Scenario—RAID 0 Volumes

RAID 0 volumes provide the fundamental building blocks for aggregating storage or building mirrors. The following example, drawing on the sample system 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 has a collection of relatively small (9 Gbyte) disks, and it is entirely possible that specific applications would require larger storage spaces. To create larger spaces (and improve performance), the system administrator can create a stripe that spans multiple disks. For example, each of c1t1d0, c1t2d0, c1t3d0 and c2t1d0, c2t2d0, c2t3d0 could be formatted with a slice 0 that spans the entire disk. Then, a stripe including all three of the disks from the same controller could provide approximately 27Gbytes of storage and allow faster access. The second stripe, from the second controller, can be used for redundancy, as described in Chapter 11, RAID 1 (Mirror) Volumes (Tasks) and specifically in the Scenario—RAID 1 Volumes (Mirrors).