MSA 1000 Partitioning after RAID?

[Tan Eu Jin]

May I know if I have done a Raid(any) on MSA 1000, would I be able to chop it into partitions and still mount it?

[Uwe Zessin]

Hello,
I am not sure if I understand your question correctly, but I will give it a try anyway.

On the MSA you combine several physical disks together to form an 'array'. That is just an object to organize you disks. From that you create one or several logical disks out of the same array.

You don't need to put all disks into one array. You can create multiple arrays out of different sets of physical disks, e.g. for I/O separation.

Such a logical disk is then presented to the host and visible as a SCSI LUN. Now it is in the hand of the operating system what to do with the disk. Depending on your environment you can split up such a LUN into one or more 'partition'.

On Windows, for example you will get multiple drive letters.

I hope that made it somewhat clear. If not, please rephrase and be a bit mor verbose. Describe our environment, the operating system, what you want to use those partitions for. Thanks.

[Tan Eu Jin]

My apologies.

Mine is a general question.

For example I want to have Raid 5 on 5 physical disks. After Raid 5, I want to split it up into 3 LUNs. Is that possible with MSA 1000?

[Stephen Kebbell]

Hi,

Yes, you can. ACU lets you create several logical drives on one physical array (up to 32 logical drives for the entire MSA1000)
First you create the array, then the logical drive. From the MSA 1000 User's guide: The default size shown is the largest possible logical drive size for the RAID level that you chose and the set of physical drives that is being used. Reducing the size of the logical drive liberates drive space, which you can use to build additional logical drives on the same array.

Hope that helps.

Stephen

[Uwe Zessin]

No it does not work exactly like you have worded it (at least like I have understood your words). An array does not have a RAID level assciated to it. It is just used to describe which physical disks belong together.

But that is not bad, because you can still
create one or more logical disks out of the same array and assign a RAID level to it. These logical disks will span over all physical disks within the array.