Automatic Configuration Of RAID Based On Tailored Linux System

Since the 21st century, with the continuous development of Internet technology, large amounts of people has been using the various applications of the Internet, making a sharp rise in the quantity of information data every day around the world. As quantity of data is explosively growing, all kinds of storage technologies and storage solutions is put forward at the historic moment. The technology of RAID redundant array has high reliability, the capacity of large data, strong adaptability, and the advantages of high bandwidth, these advantages make the RAID technology widely used in the data center. With the technology of RAID, you can configure RAID in different ways according to the needs of different environment, so as to achieve the storage requirements of application. Over the years, the technology of the configuration of RAID does not have been rapidly developed though it is used widely. So far, the mainstream method about configuration of RAID is still the traditional method of manual configuration, which shows the server urgently needs a highly efficient and stable way to configure RAID.When a server is installed an operating system, we can configure RAID by using software, but for the new server produced from the factory can't be configured, therefore, this method of configuration has great limitations. The way to manually configure the RAID through the BIOS into the SSA interface needs the personnel with higher requirements. As a result, to design a kind of automated process for the configuration of RAID has very important significance.This thesis designs a kind of automated processes for the configuration of RAID. First of all, saving the configuration parameters using an order issued by the management software, and then using PXE tools to install operating system in the server, the process of agent communicates with management software with the intention of getting configuration parameters which is used to configure RAID of the server. According to the different functions, this system is divided into four modules. Firstly, the server installed Linux system needs to install the software of configuring RAID, and drive a specific network card to complete the communication with management software in the switch, and ensure system as small as possible. Therefore, the Linux system is cut out from the aspect of driven. Secondly, customing the root file system of Initramfs, In order to make Linux system work normally, both kernel and the root file system of Initramfs is needed. The operation system can efficiently been started because the root file system of Initramfs can dynamically been allocated the memory according to the size of the system and its startup process of system is simple. Thirdly, the function of management mainly included the configuration of RAID, stop using the configuration of RAID and the shadow configuration of RAID function. The function of management can help users configure RAID conveniently and quickly, greatly improving the user experience and efficiency of RAID configuration. Fourthly, the process of agent communicates with management software with the intention of getting configuration parameters, then the agent reported the results of RAID configuration to the management software.In the last part of this thesis, after the whole system has been realized, the process of configuring RAID automatically was tested by the company's software and hardware equipment. The test included basic functions, performance and stability of system respectively. The results of test showed that the automatical RAID configuration available for various server and types of RAID card. Compared to the traditional configuration methods, this method is widely used which has higher efficiency and stability.