You are correct, for a hardware RAID you need a hardware RAID controller.

I've only used LVM to join multiple disks, but I'm not sure if that's
classified as "Software RAID".

I have a Hardware RAID controller with 12 SAS drives.  From there, I slice
the large "disk" up with LVM.

Thanks,
Alexander

Sent from my Galaxy S10+

On Sat, Jul 18, 2020, 07:58 Michael via PLUG-discuss <
plug-discuss@lists.phxlinux.org> wrote:

> I think I want to start a raid array level 5.
> this is what my google search revealed to me:
>
> If you want to use hardware RAID device, use hot swappable hardware
> RAID device with spare disks. If any disk fails, data will be
> reconstructed on the first available spare disk without any downtime
> and since it is a hot swappable device, you can replace failed device
> while server is still running.
>
> Unfortunately, I am finding it difficult to find how to do a hardware
> array. Everything I'm finding has to do with software array with a
> paragraph about hw array so when I google hardware 'array linux' I get
> results and I get confused. Could someone point me to some concise
> instructions on doing this? I found one promising one on wiki
> (https://raid.wiki.kernel.org/index.php/Hardware_Raid_Setup_using_MegaCli)
> but they wanted a raid controller to be installed on your system
> first....
> Ohhhh .... I think I get it! the hardware raid requires The controller
> which is a pci card. So now I need a software array
>
> is that correct?
> Any concise instructions?
> --
> :-)~MIKE~(-:
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