Home > Workload Solutions > SQL Server > Guides > Microsoft SQL 2019 on Intel Optane Persistent Memory (PMem) Using Dell PowerEdge Servers > Configure RAID groups and storage
Perform the following configuration procedures before you install the operating system.
Configure the following RAID groups for different purposes:
For more information, see Configuring RAID for Dell PowerEdge R740xd.
This section describes how to configure different storage volumes (for example, SSDs, PCIe NVMe SSDs, and DAX).
We used the PERC H740P RAID Controller to create RAID groups for the SSD. Then, we created volumes on the RAID groups:
df -h
parted /dev/sdb -- sdb is a storage device example
mklabel gpt -- perform gpt partitioning
p -- look for any existing partition
rm 1 -- remove any existing partition by specifying its partition number
quit
fdisk /dev/sdb
p -- to list the partition
n -- to create new partition
p -- to select primary partition and provide the default values
w -- write newly created partition from memory to disk
mkfs.xfs /dev/sdb1
mkdir -p /localvolume/ssd
mount /dev/sdb1 /localvolume/ssd
blkid | grep sdb1
UUID=<UUID> /localvolume/ssd2 xfs defaults 0 0
Where <UUID> is the UUID obtained in the previous step.
We created an NVMe volume with a software RAID group configuration.
We configured a RAID 5 volume for all four NVME SSDs (4 x 3.2 TB Intel PCI NVMe SSDs P4610) using the software RAID utility (mdadm).
parted /dev/nvme0n1
mklabel gpt
p
<if partition already exists, remove it using>rm 1
quit
fdisk /dev/sdb
p
n
p
t
29 <for changing the file type to Linux RAID>
wq
mdadm --create /dev/md0 --level=5 --raid-devices=4 /dev/nvme[0123]n1p1
This example creates a RAID 1 array using four flash drives: /dev/nvme0n0, /dev/nvme0n1, /dev/nvme0n2, and /dev/nvme0n3.
mdadm --detail /dev/md0
mdadm -Es | grep md0
mdadm -Es | grep "md/0"
mdadm -Es | grep md0 >> /etc/mdadm.conf
mdadm -Es | grep "md/0" >> /etc/mdadm.conf
mdadm --detail /dev/md0
Wait until the resynchronization is complete before you run a test against the RAID volume on the NVMe SSDs.
mdadm --stop /dev/md0
mdadm --zero-superblock /dev/sd[abc]1
Create a DAX volume when Intel Optane PMem is configured in App Direct mode:
ndctl list -N
ndctl create-namespace --reconfig namespace0.0 --mode=fsdax --map=dev --size 270582939648 –verbose
mkfs.xfs -f /dev/pmem4
mkdir -p /pmemvol/dax0
mount /dev/pmem0 /pmemvol/dax0
/dev/pmem0 /pmemvol/dax0 xfs noatime,dax,x-systemd.device-timeout=1200 1 2
Make entries for the other DAX volumes, also.
mount -a -t xfs
df -h|egrep "File|pmem"
Filesystem Size Used Avail Use% Mounted on
/dev/pmem0 252G 792M 252G 1% /pmemvol/dax0
/dev/pmem1 252G 792M 252G 1% /pmemvol/dax1
/dev/pmem2 252G 792M 252G 1% /pmemvol/dax2
/dev/pmem3 252G 792M 252G 1% /pmemvol/dax2
…………………………………………………………
/dev/pmem11 252G 792M 252G 1% /pmemvol/dax11