# 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 (as opposed to a spanned array). The ServeRAID controller currently supports up to eight independent basic arrays.

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 controller supports RAID levels-0, 1, 1E, 5, and 5E.

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.

## 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 | Index | Contents

x-1016-SRM-00-00-EN