• What is RAID and why use it?
• Introduction and general definitions
• What is a software RAID?
• Introduction, typical hardware, and limitations
• Software RAID under Linux  with 2.4 kernels and raidtools (md)
• System requirements, supported RAID types
• Configuring RAID
• Fault tolerance and recovery
• Performance

What is not covered:

• LVM (Logical Volume Manager): http://www.sistina.com/products_lvm.htm
• Some functions overlap with RAID, other complement RAID
• LVM can be used with SoftRAID but treats it as any other device
• EVMS (Enterprise Volume Management System): http://evms.sourceforge.net/
• New and actively maintained RAID/LVM system
• Backward-compatible with MD-RAID
• Requires extensive patching of the kernel (advanced topic)