Raid and LVM ... more info

Here's some links for more information on Raid and LVM. Personally, I have no problems running Raid without LVM, but I'd never run LVM without Raid. Make sure you fully understand both before you start using them. I am not using LVM on my rebuild, just the 4x40 Raid10 and 2x80 Raid1 setups.(Note: Raid0 and LVM are similar except that Raid0 has no snapshots or redundancy; I would never use Raid0 to be honest. Raid10 is basically Raid0 + Raid1; much better option because it provides the redundancy.)

Besides redundancy, Raid can possibly increase performance of read access to the disks. Just make sure your disks for your raid array are on different channels.

Raid is not a substitute for backups! It only protects against hard drive failure; not against filesystem corruption. LVM has the ability to do snapshots at filesystem level but still that's not a replacement for a good backup system. Make sure you have a good backup system in place. A good disaster recovery system includes at minimum Raid, snapshots, and offline backup strategies.

Here are some links to some more information on LVM and RAID:

• Linux Software Raid with mdadm HowTo
• A beginners guide to LVM
• Wikipedia: Raid
• Wikipedia: LVM (Linux)