# Understanding creating basic arrays

When you group one or more physical drives together and configure the ServeRAID controller to access them in a particular pattern, you create a basic array. The maximum number of basic arrays depends on the controller and RAID level.

Arrays are used to improve security, performance, and reliability. The amount of improvement depends on the application programs that you run on the server, ServeRAID parameters, and the RAID levels that you assign to the logical drives in your arrays. The ServeRAID software supports RAID levels-0, 1, 1E, 5, 5E, and 6. (Not all RAID levels are supported by all controllers.)

Note: Each ServeRAID controller supports up to eight logical drives. If any of the existing arrays contain a RAID level-5 Enhanced logical drive, you can have only seven logical drives on a controller.

For the ServeRAID-8i controller you can configure a maximum of 128 logical drives. For the ServeRAID-7t controller, you can configure a maximum of 24 logical drives.

## More information

- Understanding creating spanned arrays
- Creating arrays and hot-spare drives in the wizard
- Configuring RAID and creating arrays (action)
- Example: Express configuration
- Physical drive capacity and unusable capacity

Glossary | Contents

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