Hi there - anyone know how to setup Linux software RAID on a server with clients on it?

Any help would be much appreciated, as we're running out of ideas :)

Thanks in advance
Joseph

By live, do you mean you want the whole server to stay up while upgrading to RAID?

Regardless, this should help.

http://linas.org/linux/raid.html

Peter

Thanks Peter - no, the server can have some downtime (ideally very brief, of course...)

My main concern is for the data that's already on the primary HDD - I'd hate to see RAID somehow wipe that drive or something similar. All the stuff we've been able to find is directed at fresh installs.

Any ideas or tips?!

Thanks again
Joseph

I would probably make a drive image with something similar to PartImage (http://partimage.org) before starting this. The process would be along these lines:

1) Take server down and attach drive for images

2) Boot from PartImage CD and create images of the current partitions (don't forget to make a backup of the MBR!)

3) Shutdown and detach image drive. Attach second RAID-drive.

From here you should be pretty free to work with the disks as you have an exact copy of your original drive.

Never ever try this on a live server without doing a couple of test-runs in your test-environment, though - something ALWAYS goes kerplonk the first couple of times! :D

That should be more than possible. It just depends on your level of backup. If you can, back up everything on the root partition to another storage (HD, Tape, etc...), then reformated the HD, and set up RAID on it.

If you want more detailed help, post more details of your situation. For example, the location of your server (do you have physical access?), the current partitions, how you want the RAID partition to be setup, etc...

Peter