What is RAID?

RAID (Redundant Array of Inexpensive Disks or Drives, or Redundant Array of Independent Disks) is a data storage virtualisation technology that combines multiple physical disk drive components into one or more logical units for the purposes of data redundancy, performance improvement, or both.

Data is distributed across the drives in one of several ways, referred to as RAID levels, depending on the required level of redundancy and performance. The different schemes, or data distribution layouts, are named by the word "RAID" followed by a number, for example RAID 0 or RAID 1. Each scheme, or RAID level, provides a different balance among the key goals: reliability, availability, performance, and capacity. RAID levels greater than RAID 0 provide protection against unrecoverable sector read errors, as well as against failures of whole physical drives.

RAID LEVELS

Some of the other raid levels have been excluded because they are not commonly used.

RAID 0

RAID 0 consists of striping, but no mirroring or parity. Compared to a spanned volume, the capacity of a RAID 0 volume is the same; it is the sum of the capacities of the disks in the set. But because striping distributes the contents of each file among all disks in the set, the failure of any disk causes all files, the entire RAID 0 volume, to be lost. A broken spanned volume at least preserves the files on the unfailing disks. The benefit of RAID 0 is that the throughput of read and write operations to any file is multiplied by the number of disks because, unlike spanned volumes, reads and writes are done concurrently, and the cost is complete vulnerability to drive failures. Indeed, the average failure rate is worse than that of an equivalent single non-RAID drive.

RAID 1

RAID 1 consists of data mirroring, without parity or striping. Data is written identically to two drives, thereby producing a "mirrored set" of drives. Thus, any read request can be serviced by any drive in the set. If a request is broadcast to every drive in the set, it can be serviced by the drive that accesses the data first (depending on its seek time and rotational latency), improving performance. Sustained read throughput, if the controller or software is optimised for it, approaches the sum of throughput of every drive in the set, just as for RAID 0. Actual read throughput of most RAID 1 implementations is slower than the fastest drive. Write throughput is always slower because every drive must be updated, and the slowest drive limits the write performance. The array continues to operate as long as at least one drive is functioning.

RAID 5

RAID 5 consists of block-level striping with distributed parity. Parity information is distributed among the drives, requiring all drives but one to be present to operate. Upon failure of a single drive, subsequent reads can be calculated from the distributed parity such that no data is lost. RAID 5 requires at least three disks. Like all single-parity concepts, large RAID 5 implementations are susceptible to system failures because of trends regarding array rebuild time and the chance of drive failure during rebuild. Rebuilding an array requires reading all data from all disks, opening a chance for a second drive failure and the loss of the entire array.

RAID 6

RAID 6 consists of block-level striping with double distributed parity. Double parity provides fault tolerance up to two failed drives. This makes larger RAID groups more practical, especially for high-availability systems, as large-capacity drives take longer to restore. RAID 6 requires a minimum of four disks. As with RAID 5, a single drive failure results in reduced performance of the entire array until the failed drive has been replaced. With a RAID 6 array, using drives from multiple sources and manufacturers, it is possible to mitigate most of the problems associated with RAID 5. The larger the drive capacities and the larger the array size, the more important it becomes to choose RAID 6 instead of RAID 5.

Hybrid Raid

RAID 1+0 ( RAID 10 )

RAID 10 is a RAID level using a stripe of mirrors, achieving both replication and sharing of data between disks. The usable capacity of a RAID 10 array is half the total capacity of the drives, needing a minimum of four drives.

According to manufacturer specifications and official independent benchmarks, in most cases RAID 10 provides better throughput and latency than all other RAID levels except RAID 0 (which wins in throughput). Thus, it is the preferable RAID level for I/O-intensive applications such as database, email, and web servers, as well as for any other use requiring high disk performance.