Novell 3.12 will support most hardware RAID systems up to 250Gb. This includes SCSI system and hybrid SCSI based systems with IDE drives. Novell 3.12 will view the RAID as one big SCSI drive. RAID management will be done through the external RAID controller which will connect to Novell via a SCSI controller mounted in the Novell server. The RAID system should be setup on a free SCSI ID, generally this would be SCSI ID#1. An active terminator should be installed at the end of the SCSI channel. Some RAID controllers have the ability to set active termination but generally an external active terminator is required. There should be active termination on each end of the SCSI bus. If an internal drive is on the same bus as the RAID system, the SCSI controller should not be terminated since it is in the middle of the bus. If the RAID is the only device on the bus, then the controller will provide termination for one end of the bus with the other end of the bus will be terminated by the RAID or an external terminator. Active termination is always preferred over passive termination. The RAID should be configured per manufactures instructions. Generally we recommend RAID 5 because it is fast and low cost. These systems should provide an active spare drive which the RAID controller can utilize any time a drive in the RAID array would fail. These system are setup to allow hot swapping of the failed drive. They will issue an alarm when a drive fails and indicate which drive needs to be replaced. The bad drive can be removed and a new drive of the same or higher capacity can be installed an made active as the new spare without downing the Novell server or affecting server performance too dramatically. Once the RAID is connected to the SCSI controller and we can see it is recognized by the controller as a drive, we will let Novell boot up the system. If we are using the RAID to include the Novell system, we will have to do an entire Novell installation. Generally, we will have a separate boot drive for the Novell system volume and just use the RAID for VOL1. Setting up the RAID as VOL1 can be done through the Novell INSTALL.NLM. From the servers Console Prompt, you will type LOAD INSTALL, then select DISK options from the menu. Locate the RAID line on the available drives and choose Create Partition. You will get a window that shows Data area and Redirection Area. Novell defaults to use 2% of the Data Area. This is not necessary on a RAID system so 20,000 blocks will be sufficient. This gives us some spare blocks which probably will never be used as the RAID should be error free. Hit the Escape key and create the partition. The listing of drives should now show the RAID with a Novell partition. Next Escape back to the main menu and select Volume options. You will see the SYS volume and any other volumes you have setup on the system. Use the Insert key to create a new entry on the table. Assign it a name and hit enter to set the name. Now you should be able to change the block size from the default 4k to 64k block size. We use 64k because it requires much less disk access and memory for large files. Hit Escape to create the volume. Then select the volume again and go to the bottom of the window and choose mount volume. After the volume has been created with 64k blocks and mounted, only the supervisor can access it. You will need to login to the server as a supervisor or someone with supervisor privileges to grant access rights to the users and groups that require access. Go to the Public directory on the Sys volume and run SYSCON. Go to the Group options on the main menu and select the DCSNLM group. Choose Trustee directory assignments. Then hit the Insert key to add rights. Type VOL1: or the new volume name that you choose when creating the volume. When you hit enter, you will grant Read and Filescan rights. Hit Enter on these rights and then Insert to get a list of Rights Not Granted. Then use F5 as a tag and tag all the right not granted. Hit Enter and then Escape to grant these rights. You should no see VOL1 or you new volume name with all rights. Repeat this process for the DCS group granting all rights for the new volume to the DCS group members as well. If you need to change the volume name, you will have to go back to the server and use the Install program. Go to the volumes option after loading install. Dismount the volume and select the new name. Then mount the volume again. Any rights you granted to users and groups for the volume will still be included even if you changed the name because rights are connected to the volumes security id and not to the actual name. If you want to use a name that is in use by another volume, you will have to dismount and rename the other volume before you can use its name. Rights granted to the old volume will not transfer to the new volume as we just discussed, rights are tied to the security id.