OS X Server Questions

[beatsme]

just a few:

it is possible to set up mirroring or RAID striping on XServe, correct? Do I have to use the Xserve RAID for that, or can I rig it to work with the internal drives? Most importantly, can someone point me toward some documentation about any of this? The more I can get my hands on, the better...

thanks in advance

 

[mkrishnan]

Mirror and stripe RAID configs are possible on both standard and server versions of MacOS X using normal drives.

See this:

http://www.yourmaclife.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=2183

It supports modes 0, 1, and concatenation (e.g. you have one big virtual disk but there is no striping or redundancy).

 

[MacsRgr8]

What's common practice when setting up Mac OS X Server (on an Xserve or other Mac in which you can install 2 or more drives), is using Disk Utility when installing Mac OS X Server to create a RAID 1 (mirror) of two identical drives.
It works very well.

 

[Makosuke]

Disk Utility's RAID features are, of course, built in and free with it, but when I set up an XServe server, I used SoftRAID for the mirroring. It's not an expensive piece of software (around $50 if memory serves), and it has some nice features that OSX's built-in RAID software doesn't.

It's not necessary, but it's worth at least reading over the documentation if you're considering an XServe RAID setup.