17.5. Configuring RAID Sets
Most RAID sets are configured during creation, typically through the firmware menu or from the installer. In some cases, you may need to create or modify RAID sets after installing the system, preferably without having to reboot the machine and enter the firmware menu to do so.
Some hardware RAID controllers allow you to configure RAID sets on-the-fly or even define completely new sets after adding extra disks. This requires the use of driver-specific utilities, as there is no standard API for this. Refer to your hardware RAID controller's driver documentation for information on this.
mdadm
The
mdadm command-line tool is used to manage software RAID in Linux, i.e. mdraid. For information on the different mdadm modes and options, refer to man mdadm. The man page also contains useful examples for common operations like creating, monitoring, and assembling software RAID arrays.
dmraid
As the name suggests,
dmraid is used to manage device-mapper RAID sets. The dmraid tool finds ATARAID devices using multiple metadata format handlers, each supporting various formats. For a complete list of supported formats, run dmraid -l.
As mentioned earlier in Section 17.3, “Linux RAID Subsystems”, the
dmraid tool cannot configure RAID sets after creation. For more information about using dmraid, refer to man dmraid.
