RAID Concepts

Engenio Storage Group

Internal RAID
2008
RAID Concepts
• Objective:
At the end of this presentation you will be able to …

– Discuss basic RAID technology market positioning

– Explain the inherent advantages of using RAID

– Identify appropriate RAID levels to use for specific platforms and

applications

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What is RAID?
• RAID stands for an redundant array of independent drives
• Intelligently manages drives in unison performing data read/write
algorithms across drives delivering
– High levels of protection against downtime and data loss (mirroring)
– Larger storage volumes achievable
– Improved performance (striping)

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RAID Level Overview
• Selecting the proper RAID level for a specific data storage application
requires consideration be given to the benefits of each

LSI Supported Use

• RAID 0 (1 to 32 disks) • Video/Audio streaming
• RAID 1 (2 disks) • OS boot
• RAID 5 (3 to 32 disks) • Transaction/Web server
• RAID 10 (4 to 16 disks) • Database
• RAID 50 (6 to 60 disks) • Data warehousing
• RAID 6 • Large capacity disk arrays

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 RAID 0 - Striping

Striping - writes data across multiple drives

 Involves partitioning each drive storage space into stripes that can
Definition vary in size from 2 KB to 1 MB.
 These stripes are interleaved in a repeated sequential manner.

High data throughput, especially for large files

Benefits
No capacity loss penalty for parity.

 No fault tolerance: If any drive in the array fails, all data is

Drawbacks
lost

 Non-critical data requiring high performance

Uses
 Environments that do not require fault tolerance

Drives Minimum 1 / Maximum 64

Fault Tolerance No

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RAID 0

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RAID 1: Mirroring
Mirroring - writes duplicate data to more than one (usually
two) drives
Definition
 Protects against data loss in the event of a device failure

 Provides 100% data redundancy

Benefits  Should one drive fail, the controller switches reads and
writes to the other drive.

 Expensive: Requires two drives for the storage space of

Drawbacks one drive
 Reduced Performance during drive rebuilds.

 If availability is critical
Uses  Use RAID 1 for small databases or any other environment that
requires fault tolerance but small capacity

Drives 2
Fault Tolerance Yes

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RAID 1

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 RAID 5 : Striping with Rotational Parity
Striping with rotational parity - blocks of data and parity
information is stripped across all drives
Definition
 RAID level 5 is the most popular configuration, providing striping
as well as parity for error recovery

 Uses one disk worth of space to achieve data redundancy

Benefits  If a hot spare is available, it can perform a rebuild
automatically

 Cannot match RAID 0 in write performance due to

processing required to compute parity
Drawbacks
 While a controller is rebuilding a drive, users will experience
reduced performance if reading or writing data
 Any application that has high read request rates and
average write request rates
Uses
 Transaction servers, web servers, data mining applications,
exchange servers
Drives Minimum 3
Fault Tolerance Yes

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RAID 5

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RAID 10 : Spanning two RAID 1’s

Spanning two RAID 1’s - writing duplicate data to more than

Definition one pair of drives to protect against data loss in the event of a
up to two disk failures (one per array)
 Optimized for both fault tolerance and performance
Benefits  Provides both high data transfer rates and complete data
redundancy
 Requires half the available disk space for data redundancy
Drawbacks
Same as RAID level 1.

 Environments that require 100% redundancy of mirroring

(RAID 1) and the enhanced I/O performance of stripping
Uses (RAID 0)
 Ideal for smaller organizations needing a high degree of
fault tolerance and moderate to medium capacity.

Drives Minimum 4 / Maximum 16

Fault Tolerance Yes

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RAID 50 : Spanning two RAID 5’s
Data is “striped” across multiple drive groups (super drive
group). For data redundancy, drives are encoded with rotated
Definition XOR redundancy. RAID 50 provides the features of both
RAID 0 and RAID 5. RAID 50 includes both parity and disk
striping across multiple drives.
RAID 50 provides high data throughput, data redundancy,
Benefits
and very good performance.

Requires at least twice as many parity drives as a single

Drawbacks
RAID 5.

RAID 50 works best when used with data that requires high
Uses reliability, high request rates, and high data transfer and
medium to large capacity.

Drives Minimum 6

Fault Tolerance Yes

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RAID 50

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 RAID 0+1 Enhanced Mirroring
The controller combines the performance of data striping
(RAID 0) and the fault tolerance of disk mirroring (RAID 1).
Definition
Data is striped across multiple drives and duplicated on
another set of drives.

Optimizes for both fault tolerance and performance. Provides

Benefits excellent performance for all data needs. May be
simultaneously used with other RAID levels in an array.

Requires half the available disk space for data redundancy,

Drawbacks
the same as RAID level 1.

If a drive fails, the controller uses the parity drive to recreate

Uses
all missing information.

Drives Minimum 4
Fault Tolerance Yes

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RAID 0+1

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RAID 1E Enhanced Mirroring
Enhanced mirroring - combines mirroring with data striping
Definition  The first set of stripes are the data, and the second set of
stripes are mirrors of the first data stripe contained within
the next logical drive.
 Shares the characteristics of RAID 1, but allows more than
two drives, including odd numbers of drives
Benefits  If one of the drives fails, the controller switches read and
write requests to the remaining functional drives in the
RAID level-1E array.
Drawbacks  50% storage efficiency
 When array availability is most important
Uses  For small databases or any other environment that requires
fault tolerance but small capacity
Drives Minimum 3
Fault Tolerance Yes

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RAID 1E

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JBOD: Single Drive Control

Single drive control - the ability to combine odd size drives

Benefits using all of the capacity of the drives.

 Decreases performance because of the difficulty in using

Drawbacks drives concurrently or to optimize drives for different uses

 Works best when used if you have odd sized drives and
Uses you want to combine them to make one big drive

Fault Tolerance No

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 RAID 6 : Striping with Dual Rotational Parity
Distributed parity – disk striping and two independent parity
Definition blocks per stripe
 Can survive the loss of two disks without losing data

Benefits  Data redundancy, high read rates, and good performance

 Requires two sets of parity data for each write operation,

resulting in significant decrease in write performance
Drawbacks
 Additional costs because of the extra capacity required by
using two parity blocks per stripe
 Any application that has high read request rates and
average write request rates
Uses
 Transaction servers, web servers, data mining applications,
exchange servers
Drives Minimum 3
Fault Tolerance Yes

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RAID 6

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RAID Level Summary
• RAID 0: Fastest and most efficient level but offers no fault tolerance
• RAID 1: Performance-critical, fault tolerant environments, but requires
2X storage
• RAID 5: Best choice for multi-user environments which are not write
performance sensitive
• RAID 10: Ideal for environments that require 100% redundancy with
enhanced I/O performance of stripping and can afford such an
investment
• RAID 50: Works best when used with data that requires high reliability,
high request rates, and high data transfer rates
• RAID 0+1: Optimal for applications needing both fault tolerance and
performance. Provides excellent but additional capacity investment
• RAID 1E: Great choice for small databases or any other environment
that need fault tolerance but have small capacity requirements
• RAID 6: Ideal for organizations of all sizes requiring data redundancy,
high read rates, and good performance

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