RH 7.1 installation on an IBM server with 3 scsi disks

[Rick Stevens]

pmo_listserv at emailgroups.net wrote:
>>Hello guys/gals! I have an IBM dual pentium processor server that has 3
>>SCSI disks. Disk 1 (has around 4 to 10GB of hard disk space) and Disk 2
>>(same storage as Disk1) are just your ordinary SCSI disks while the third
>>one (over 400GB of hard disk space) has RAID5 in it.

Huh?  How can a single disk be RAID5?  You need at least three disks
for a RAID5 configuration.  If you mean you have three disks that
are set up as a RAID5 and look like your third disk, fine, but say so.

>>My task is to have Red Hat installed in this server. My question is if it
>>is possible to install the OS in the disk which has Raid5 and just
>>disregard the other two ordinary scsi disks? If yes, will it have an
>>impact on server performance?    

Again, you can't have RAID5 on a single disk.  As to whether you can
install Linux on a RAID5 system, sure.  It depends on if it's a hardware
or software RAID as to how to do the install.

Performance-wise, there is tiny penalty for hardware RAID5, but the data
security more than makes up for it.  If it's a software RAID5, the
penalty is more severe than it is for a hardware RAID5 since the CPU has
to do the striping rather than delegating it to a hardware controller.
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- Rick Stevens, Senior Systems Engineer     rstevens at vitalstream.com -
- VitalStream, Inc.                       http://www.vitalstream.com -
-                                                                    -
-         Okay, who put a "stop payment" on my reality check?        -
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