VISHI HIGHER INSTITUTE

2024

REDUNDANT ARRAY OF INDEPENDENT DISK(RAID)

GWANMESIA EMMA JULIENNE BIDMIA

SWE LEVEL 200

 TABLE OF CONTENT

TOPIC: RAID
WHAT IS RAID 1
HISTORY 1
HOW RAID WORKS 1
RAID CONTROLLERS 3
TYPES OF RAID CONTROLLERS3
WHY DATA REDUNDANCY 4
KEY EVALUATION POINTS FOR A RAID SYSTEM 4
RAID LEVELS 5
STANDARD LEVELS 9
NESTED LEVELS 10
NON-STANDARD LEVELS11
RAID IMPLEMENTATION 8
HARDWARE-BASED 9
SOFTWARE-BASED 10
FIRMWARE AND DRIVER-BASED 10
WHEN RAID SHOULD BE USED 10
INTEGRITY 10
WEAKNESSES 10
ATOMICITY 10
INTEGRITY 10
RAID BENEFITS 8
ADVANTAGES 9
DISADVANTAGES 10
FUTURE OF RAIDS 10
RAID
RAID (Redundant Arrays of Independent Disks) is a technique that makes use of a
combination of multiple disks for storing the data instead of using a single disk for
increased performance, data redundancy, or to protect data in the case of a drive
failure. The term was defined by David Patterson, Garth A. Gibson, and Randy Katz
at the University of California, Berkeley in 1987.

History
The term "RAID" was invented by David Patterson, Garth Gibson, and Randy Katz at
the University of California, Berkeley in 1987. In their June 1988 paper "A Case for
Redundant Arrays of Inexpensive Disks (RAID)", presented at
the SIGMOD Conference, they argued that the top-performing mainframe disk drives
of the time could be beaten on performance by an array of the inexpensive drives
that had been developed for the growing personal computer market. Although
failures would rise in proportion to the number of drives, by configuring for
redundancy, the reliability of an array could far exceed that of any large single drive.

Although not yet using that terminology, the technologies of the five levels of RAID
named in the June 1988 paper were used in various products prior to the paper's
publication, including the following:

 Mirroring (RAID 1) was well established in the 1970s including, for

example, Tandem NonStop Systems.
 In 1977, Norman Ken Ouchi at IBM filed a patent disclosing what was
subsequently named RAID 4.
 Around 1983, DEC began shipping subsystem mirrored RA8X disk drives (now
known as RAID 1) as part of its HSC50 subsystem.
 In 1986, Clark et al. at IBM filed a patent disclosing what was subsequently
named RAID 5.
 Around 1988, the Thinking Machines' DataVault used error correction codes
(now known as RAID 2) in an array of disk drives. A similar approach was used
in the early 1960s on the IBM 353.
Industry manufacturers later redefined the RAID acronym to stand for "redundant
array of independent disks".

How RAID Works?

Let us understand how RAID works with an example- Imagine you have a bunch of
friends, and you want to keep your favorite book safe. Instead of giving the book to
just one friend, you make copies and give a piece to each friend. Now, if one friend
loses their piece, you can still put the book together from the other pieces. That’s
similar to how RAID works with hard drives. It splits your data across multiple drives,
so if one drive fails, your data is still safe on the others. RAID helps keep your
information secure, just like spreading your favorite book among friends keeps it
safe.

RAID works by placing data on multiple disks and allowing input/output (I/O)
operations to overlap in a balanced way, improving performance. Because using
multiple disks increases the mean time between failures, storing data redundantly
also increases fault tolerance. RAID arrays appear to the operating system (OS) as a
single logical drive. RAID employs the techniques of disk mirroring or disk striping.
Mirroring will copy identical data onto more than one drive. Striping partitions help
spread data over multiple disk drives. Each drive's storage space is divided into units
ranging from a sector of 512 bytes up to several megabytes. The stripes of all the
disks are interleaved and addressed in order. Disk mirroring and disk striping can
also be combined in a RAID array.
What is a RAID Controller?
A RAID controller is like a boss for your hard drives in a big storage system. It works
between your computer’s operating system and the actual hard drives, organizing
them into groups to make them easier to manage. This helps speed up how fast your
computer can read and write data, and it also adds a layer of protection in case one
of your hard drives breaks down. So, it’s like having a smart helper that makes your
hard drives work better and keeps your important data safer.

Types of RAID Controller

There are three types of RAID controller:

Hardware Based: In hardware-based RAID, there’s a physical controller that

manages the whole array. This controller can handle the whole group of hard drives
together. It’s designed to work with different types of hard drives, like SATA (Serial
Advanced Technology Attachment) or SCSI (Small Computer System Interface).
Sometimes, this controller is built right into the computer’s main board, making it
easier to set up and manage your RAID system. It’s like having a captain for your
team of hard drives, making sure they work together smoothly.

Software Based: In software-based RAID, the controller doesn’t have its own
special hardware. So it use computer’s main processor and memory to do its job. It
perform the same function as a hardware-based RAID controller, like managing the
hard drives and keeping your data safe. But because it’s sharing resources with
other programs on your computer, it might not make things run as fast. So, while it’s
still helpful, it might not give you as big of a speed boost as a hardware-based RAID
system
Firmware Based: Firmware-based RAID controllers are like helpers built into the
computer’s main board. They work with the main processor, just like software-based
RAID. But they only implement when the computer starts up. Once the operating
system is running, a special driver takes over the RAID job. These controllers aren’t
as expensive as hardware ones, but they make the computer’s main processor work
harder. People also call them hardware-assisted software RAID, hybrid model RAID,
or fake RAID.

Why Data Redundancy?

Data redundancy, although taking up extra space, adds to disk reliability. This
means, that in case of disk failure, if the same data is also backed up onto
another disk, we can retrieve the data and go on with the operation. On the
other hand, if the data is spread across multiple disks without the RAID
technique, the loss of a single disk can affect the entire data.

Key Evaluation Points for a RAID System

Reliability: How many disk faults can the system tolerate?

Availability: What fraction of the total session time is a system in uptime mode,
i.e. how available is the system for actual use?

Performance: How good is the response time? How high is the throughput
(rate of processing work)? Note that performance contains a lot of parameters,
not just the two.

Capacity: Given a set of N disks each with B blocks, how much useful capacity is
available to the user?

RAID is very transparent to the underlying system. This means, that to the host
system, it appears as a single big disk presenting itself as a linear array of
blocks. This allows older technologies to be replaced by RAID without making
too many changes to the existing code.
 RAID LEVELS
RAID devices use different versions, called levels. The original paper that coined the
term and developed the RAID setup concept defined six levels of RAID -- 0 through
5. This numbered system enabled those in IT to differentiate RAID versions. The
number of levels has since expanded and has been broken into three categories:
standard, nested and nonstandard RAID levels.

STANDARD RAID LEVELS

1. RAID-0 (Stripping)
RAID 0, also known as a striped set or a striped volume, requires a minimum of
two disks. The disks are merged into a single large volume where data is stored
evenly across the number of disks in the array.

This process is called disk striping and involves splitting data into blocks and
writing it simultaneously/sequentially on multiple disks. Configuring the striped
disks as a single partition increases performance since multiple disks do reading
and writing operations simultaneously. Therefore, RAID 0 is generally
implemented to improve speed and efficiency.
In the figure above, blocks “0,1,2,3” form a stripe. Instead of placing just one block into a
disk at a time, we can work with two (or more) blocks placed into a disk before moving on to
the next one.

Evaluation
Reliability: 0. There is no duplication of data. Hence, a block once lost cannot be
recovered.

Capacity: N*B. The entire space is being used to store data. Since there is no
duplication, N disks each having B blocks are fully utilized.

Advantages of RAID 0
 Cost-efficient and straightforward to implement.
 Increased read and write performance.
 No overhead (total capacity use).

Disadvantages of RAID 0
 Doesn't provide fault tolerance or redundancy.
 A single drive loss can result in the complete failure of the system.
 It’s not a good choice for a critical system.

When Raid 0 Should Be Used

RAID 0 is used when performance is a priority and reliability is not. If you
want to utilize your drives to the fullest and don't mind losing data, opt for
RAID 0.

On the other hand, such a configuration does not necessarily have to be

unreliable. You can set up disk striping on your system along with another
RAID array that ensures data protection and redundancy.