What should I know before I set up RAID 6 on Linux?

Posted by Dan Ellis on Server Fault See other posts from Server Fault or by Dan Ellis
Published on 2012-10-01T21:14:19Z Indexed on 2012/10/01 21:39 UTC
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linux

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raid

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md

I just ordered five 1TB drives to install as a RAID 6 array in a Linux server (keeping the existing 1TB drive as a boot disk). I want to use Linux MD for RAID rather than a RAID card, to avoid lock-in. The intended use is for storing filesystems for Xen development environments and an AFP server for iPhoto/Aperture/Lightroom.

What things should I know before I set it up? For example, what would be a good choice of filesystem, and what chunk size should I use?

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