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• RAID 50: a combination of RAID 0 and RAID 5
RAID 50 uses distributed parity and disk striping. A RAID 50 drive group is a spanned drive group in
which data is striped across multiple RAID 5 drive groups. RAID 50 works best with data that requires
high reliability, high request rates, high data transfers, and medium-to-large capacity.
Note: Having virtual drives of different RAID levels, such as RAID 0 and RAID 5, in the same drive group is
not allowed. For example, if an existing RAID 5 virtual drive is created out of partial space in an array, the
next virtual drive in the array has to be RAID 5 only.
RAID 50 requires a minimum number of six hard disk drives.
For detailed information about RAID, refer to “Introduction to RAID” in the MegaRAID SAS Software User
Guide on the documentation DVD that comes with your server.
Conguring RAID using the ThinkServer EasyStartup program
The ThinkServer EasyStartup program simplies the process of conguring supported RAID and installing
supported Windows and Linux operating systems and device drivers on your server. The user guide for the
program can be accessed directly from the program interface.
The ThinkServer EasyStartup program has the following features for RAID conguration:
• For use with all supported RAID controllers
• Automatically detects hardware and lists all supported RAID congurations
• Congures one or more disk arrays per controller depending on the number of drives attached to the
controller and the RAID level selected
• Supports hot-spare drives
• Creates a RAID response le that can be used to congure RAID controllers on similarly congured
Lenovo servers
See “Using the ThinkServer EasyStartup program” on page 59 and view the user guide from the main
interface of the program.
Some RAID management software also is provided on the ThinkServer EasyStartup DVD to help you manage
RAID arrays and RAID controllers in an operating system environment. After you enter the operating system,
insert the ThinkServer EasyStartup DVD into the optical drive. The installation packages for the programs
are located in the Utilities and Others folder in the root directory of the DVD. The ThinkServer EasyStartup
DVD is designed for different types of servers and the Utilities and Others folder might contain additional
installation packages that are not required to be installed on your server.
Conguring the advanced SATA or SAS hardware RAID
Before conguring RAID for your server, observe the following precautions:
• Use hard disk drives that are of the same type (SATA or SAS) and have the same capacity within a
single RAID array.
• Depending on the operating system, the total drive capacity of the primary RAID might be limited to 2 TB.
Your server comes with a RAID card to provide advanced SATA or SAS hardware RAID functions. See
“RAID card” on page 30.
The RAID card provides the WebBIOS Conguration Utility program to help you congure RAID
independently of the operating system. You also can install the MegaRAID Storage Manager program and
the MegaCLI Conguration Utility program to help you manage the RAID array and RAID controller in an
operating system environment.
64 ThinkServer RD540 User Guide and Hardware Maintenance Manual