System information

152 Appendix A Preparing Disks for Installing Mac OS X Server
Partitioning a Hard Disk
Partitioning the hard disk creates a volume for server system software and one or more
additional volumes for data and other software. The minimum recommended size for
an installation partition is 20 GB. A larger volume is recommended for a standard or
workgroup configuration, because these configurations keep shared folders and group
websites on the startup volume together with the server software. Use Disk Utility to
partition a hard disk.
Creating a RAID Set
If you’re installing Leopard Server on a computer with multiple internal hard disk
drives, you can create a RAID (Redundant Array of Independent Disks) set to optimize
storage capacity, improve performance, and increase reliability in case of a disk failure.
For example, a mirrored RAID set increases reliability by writing your data to two or
more disks at once. If one disk fails, your server automatically starts using one of the
other disks in the RAID set.
You use Disk Utility to set up a RAID set. You can set up RAID mirroring after installing
Mac OS X Server if you install on a disk that isn’t partitioned. To prevent data loss, you
should set up RAID mirroring as soon as possible. For information about setting up a
RAID set, open Disk Utility and then use the Help menu.