Installing Ubuntu 12.04 with Software RAID

We have seen that the guided partitioning on Ubuntu Server 12.04 makes life plain and simple for us. However,  if we want to depart from that well trodden path then we will need to delve a little more into the partitioning options.

Using a manual partitioning plan will allow us to mount directories separately to the / directory as required as well as allowing us to choose software RAID. This we may choose if we have 2 or more disks and do not have a hardware RAID controller to use.

The video will take us though the process of creating software RAID for the root file-system and swap. Using GRUB2 as our boot-loader we can use the complete disks and do not need a separate /boot structure. GRUB2 is the default boot-loader on Ubuntu since 9.04.

Once installed we will look at the command, dpkg-reconfigure mdadm, so we can review how to make the root file-system bootable with a device failure. We have to do this also in the GRUB2 config files including /etc/default/grub . Once in place we can configure a simulated disk failure to see that we can still boot.