Veritas Volume Manager RAID-5 arrays

The RAID-5 array structure in Veritas Volume Manager differs from the traditional structure. Due to the virtual nature of its disks and other objects, VxVM does not use rows.

Figure: Veritas Volume Manager RAID-5 array shows how VxVM uses columns consisting of variable length subdisks, where each subdisk represents a specific area of a disk.

Figure: Veritas Volume Manager RAID-5 array

Veritas Volume Manager RAID-5 array

VxVM allows each column of a RAID-5 plex to consist of a different number of subdisks. The subdisks in a given column can be derived from different physical disks. Additional subdisks can be added to the columns as necessary. Striping is implemented by applying the first stripe across each subdisk at the top of each column, then applying another stripe below that, and so on for the length of the columns. Equal-sized stripe units are used for each column. For RAID-5, the default stripe unit size is 16 kilobytes.

Note:

Mirroring of RAID-5 volumes is not supported.

More Information

Striping (RAID-0)

Creating a RAID-5 volume