Sebastopol, CA — (PR excerpt) — RAID technology is becoming a standard feature of computer systems that support mission-critical services such as file sharing, mail exchange, and web servers. RAID offers two primary benefits to these systems: improved I/O performance and fail-safe data storage.

RAID is a method by which many independent disks attached to a computer can be made, from the perspective of users and applications, to appear as a single disk. As says Derek Vadala, author of the just-released “Managing RAID on Linux” (O'Reilly, US $39.95), explains, this has several implications: “Performance can be dramatically improved because the bottleneck of using a single disk for all I/O is spread across more than one disk. Larger storage capacities can be achieved, since you're using multiple disks instead of a single disk. And specific disks can be used to transparently store data that can then be used to survive a disk failure.”

“Managing RAID on Linux” covers everything needed to put together a system that can support RAID. Readers will learn about the different types of RAID, along with associated technologies and issues, and how to choose the best RAID system for their needs. With a step-by-step, hands-on approach, the author covers
the installation of either Linux software RAID or a hardware RAID card. The book shows how to build an array and optionally install a high-performance file system.

Chapter 2, “Planning and Architecture,” is available free online here. For more information about the book, including Table of Contents, index, author bio, and samples, are here.

 
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