In Disk Druid, choose RAID to enter the software RAID creation screen.

Choose Create a software RAID partition to create a RAID partition as shown in Figure 4.2, “RAID Partition Options”. Note that no other RAID options (such as entering a mount point) are available until RAID partitions, as well as RAID devices, are created.

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Figure 4.2. RAID Partition Options

A software RAID partition must be constrained to one drive. For Allowable Drives, select the drive to use for RAID. If you have multiple drives, by default all drives are selected and you must deselect the drives you do not want.

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Figure 4.3. Adding a RAID Partition

Enter the size that you want the partition to be.

Select Fixed Size to specify partition size. Select Fill all space up to (MB) and enter a value (in MB) to specify partition size range. Select Fill to maximum allowable size to allow maximum available space of the hard disk. Note that if you make more than one space growable, they share the available free space on the disk.

Select Force to be a primary partition if you want the partition to be a primary partition. A primary partition is one of the first four partitions on the hard drive. If unselected, the partition is created as a logical partition. If other operating systems are already on the system, unselecting this option should be considered. For more information on primary versus logical/extended partitions, refer to the appendix section of the Red Hat Enterprise Linux Installation Guide.

Repeat these steps to create as many partitions as you need for your partitions.

Select the RAID button on the Disk Druid main partitioning screen (refer to Figure 4.5, “RAID Options”).

Figure 4.5, “RAID Options” appears. Select Create a RAID device.

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Figure 4.5. RAID Options

Next, Figure 4.6, “Making a RAID Device and Assigning a Mount Point” appears, where you can make a RAID device and assign a mount point.

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Figure 4.6. Making a RAID Device and Assigning a Mount Point

Select a mount point.

Choose the file system type for the partition. At this point you can either configure a dynamic LVM file system or a traditional static ext2/ext3 file system. For more information on configuring LVM on a RAID device, select physical volume (LVM). If LVM is not required, continue on with the following instructions.

Select a device name such as md0 for the RAID device.

Choose your RAID level. You can choose from RAID 0, RAID 1, and RAID 5.

Note

If you are making a RAID partition of /boot/, you must choose RAID level 1, and it must use one of the first two drives (IDE first, SCSI second). If you are not creating a seperate RAID partition of /boot/, and you are making a RAID partition for the root file system (/), it must be RAID level 1 and must use one of the first two drives (IDE first, SCSI second).

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Figure 4.7. The /boot/ Mount Error

The RAID partitions created appear in the RAID Members list. Select which of these partitions should be used to create the RAID device.

If configuring RAID 1 or RAID 5, specify the number of spare partitions. If a software RAID partition fails, the spare is automatically used as a replacement. For each spare you want to specify, you must create an additional software RAID partition (in addition to the partitions for the RAID device). Select the partitions for the RAID device and the partition(s) for the spare(s).

After clicking OK, the RAID device appears in the Drive Summary list.

Repeat this chapter's entire process for configuring additional partitions, devices, and mount points, such as the root partition (/), /home/, or swap.