Gregg Eldred

One feature of Lotus Foundations that has eluded me is no longer a mystery.

An option, when configuring a Lotus Foundations server for a customer, is RAID. In the configuration tool, a Business Partner can choose "none," RAID1, or RAID5. Interestingly, there is never a cost for any of those choices. Conversations with several people indicated that it was either free or an additional cost. With no solid answer, I was a bit confused. However, a little patience and another reading of the Foundations Administrators Guide (this time, focusing on RAID), paid off.

RAID, on Foundations, is configured through the software (assuming you have purchased the appropriate number of drives).



Remember, if you are configuring the Foundations server, to add the appropriate number of 250GB drives to achieve the level of RAID that your customer requires. And then use Disk Status within the Lotus Foundations WebConfig to implement RAID through the software.

From the Lotus Foundations 1.1 Getting Started Guide:

• For example, if you have two disks, the Disk Status section displays "The main disk is not configured. You can configure disks #1, #2 all in a RAID or disk #1 as a standalone disk and #2 as an IDB backup disk." If you have three disks, the Disk Status section displays "The main disk is not configured. You can configure disks #1, #2. #3 all in a RAID or disk #1.#2 in a RAID and disk #3 as an IDB backup disk." A Lotus Foundations server could have up to 6 drives, and a third-party server could potentially have more.
• For a RAID configuration, click All in a RAID. If you want to enable IDB backup, click Disk #2 as an IDB backup disk.
• If you select a RAID configuration, then the RAID array begins to rebuild. This process does not noticeably affect the performance of Lotus Foundations.

A little more careful research (and proper ordering of drives), a couple of mouse clicks, and you have an extremely solid SMB server. While I think that RAID would be a feature that would make a good selling point, none of the marketing materials from IBM mention it. But that doesn't make a difference, now that you (and I) know how to configure and implement it. :-)

Link: Configure disks (Lotus Foundations Start 1.1 - Getting Started Guide)

Technorati tag: Lotus Foundations SnTT Show-n-Tell Thursday

Comment posted by Michael A09/23/2009 01:37:12 PM

Well now, it would be super duper to see a mention that more drives = RAID configuration menus in the built in native-help on the Webconfig!

I've only had access to Foundations appliances that had 1 internal and 1 external. Having even the smallest reference that it IS capable would have been very re-assuring!

Many thanks for the insider tip!

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