5 Working With Software RAID

The Redundant Array of Independent Disks (RAID) feature provides the capability to spread data across several drives to increase capacity, implement data redundancy, and increase performance. RAID is implemented either in hardware through intelligent disk storage that exports the RAID volumes as LUNs, or in software by the OS. The Oracle Linux kernel uses the multiple device (MD) driver to support software RAID to create virtual devices from two or more physical storage devices. MD enables you to organize disk drives into RAID devices and implement different RAID levels.

You can create RAID devices using mdadm or Logical Volume Manager (LVM).