Netware drive mirroring question

[summoner]

I have a netware 5.1 server that I built rather quickly to serve some files. Now that budget has allocated some more cash, I would like to add some form of fault tolerance to this server. I am planning on using 2 9 gig scsi drives (adaptec 2940uw) and 4 ata-100 drives (promise tx4 raid 0+1).

I will use the ata array for file storage. The first 9 gig drive is where I'll install the server. After installation completes, I would like to use NWConfig to mirror the installation on the second 9 gig drive. Is this recommended or should I go for hardware raid. Thanks

 

[summoner]

What I'm also asking is that if I mirror the installation and sys volume, will netware be able to boot from this mirrored array?

 

[SuperDaveDCF]

Here is how I have handled this on our servers that don't have a raid controller.

Install your flavor of DOS to the first 9 gig drive making sure to include any tweaks you make to autoexec or config.sys or DOS cd drivers. Make sure that you make the drive bootable when you format it.

Pull the first drive out and put the second 9 gig drive in its place and repeat above steps. You want to make sure that the two drives are identical.

During the Netware install create your sys on the 9gb drive and other volumes on the other drives. Then after the server is up go back to mirror the 9gb drives. Then down the server and bring it back to a DOS prompt so you can copy the nwserver directory, autoexec, etc from the bootable drive to the second drive. Double check your files to be sure the two drives are identical. If the first drive should happen to fail, you now have a second drive to put in its place.

This setup will work fine but if your funding permits I would rather use a RAID controller.

 

[sinyce]

Summoner:

Follow SuperDave advice to achieve fault tolerance on the NetWare O/S, ditto that on the 2nd 9 GB and create the mirror in NWCONFIG. Keep only NetWare Operating System files here.

Install and create your RAID 5 on the 4-100 GB drives. This is where you'll store your Application, Data and User Files. In this way you'll have fault tolerance both ways - on your o/s and NDS accounts and on your data files.

If the RAID drives are hot-swapped then it gets better.