Redundant Array of Inexpensive disks

 RAID stands for Redundant Array of Inexpensive Disks which was later interpreted to
Redundant Array of Independent Disks. This technology is now used in almost all the IT
organizations looking for data redundancy and better performance. It combines multiple
available disks into 1 or more logical drive and gives you the ability to survive one or more
drive failures depending upon the RAID level used.

 Raid contains groups or sets or Arrays. A combine of drivers make a group of disks to form a
RAID Array or RAID set. It can be a minimum of 2 number of disk connected to a raid
controller and make a logical volume or more drives can be in a group. Only one Raid level
can be applied in a group of disks. Raid are used when we need excellent performance.

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Software RAID and Hardware RAID

 Software RAID have low performance, because of consuming resource from hosts. Raid
software need to load for read data from software raid volumes. Before loading raid
software, OS need to get boot to load the raid software. No need of Physical hardware in
software raids. Zero cost investment.

 Hardware RAID have high performance. They are dedicated RAID Controller which is
Physically built using PCI express cards. It won’t use the host resource. They have NVRAM for
cache to read and write. Stores cache while rebuild even if there is power-failure, it will store
the cache using battery power backups. Very costly investments needed for a large scale.

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Hardware Raid look like below:

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Featured Concepts of RAID

 Parity method in raid regenerate the lost content from parity saved information’s. RAID
5, RAID 6 Based on Parity.
 Stripe is sharing data randomly to multiple disk. This won’t have full data in a single disk.
If we use 3 disks half of our data will be in each disks.
 Mirroring is used in RAID 1 and RAID 10. Mirroring is making a copy of same data. In RAID
1 it will save the same content to the other disk too.
 Hot spare is just a spare drive in our server which can automatically replace the failed
drives. If any one of the drive failed in our array this hot spare drive will be used and
rebuild automatically.
 Chunks are just a size of data which can be minimum from 4KB and more. By defining
chunk size we can increase the I/O performance.

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RAID Levels

RAID’s are in various Levels. Here we will see only the RAID Levels which is used
mostly in real environment.

 RAID0 = Striping
 RAID1 = Mirroring
 RAID5 = Single Disk Distributed Parity
 RAID6 = Double Disk Distributed Parity
 RAID10 = Combine of Mirror & Stripe. (Nested RAID)

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 RAID Levels

 RAID 0

 This level strips the data into multiple available drives equally giving a very high read
and write performance but offering no fault tolerance or redundancy. This level does not
provide any of the RAID factor and cannot be considered in an organization looking for
redundancy instead it is preferred where high performance is required.

Calculation:
No. of Disk: 5
Size of each disk: 100GB

Usable Disk size: 500GB

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RAID Levels

 RAID 0

Pros Cons
Data is stripped into multiple drives No support for Data Redundancy
Disk space is fully utilized No support for Fault Tolerance
Minimum 2 drives required No error detection mechanism
High performance Failure of either disk results in complete data loss in respective array

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RAID Levels

 RAID 1

This level performs mirroring of data in drive 1 to drive 2. It offers 100% redundancy as
array will continue to work even if either disk fails. So organization looking for better
redundancy can opt for this solution but again cost can become a factor.

Calculation:
No. of Disk: 2
Size of each disk: 100GB

Usable Disk size: 100GB

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RAID Levels

 RAID 1

Pros Cons
Performs mirroring of data i.e identical data from one Expense is higher (1 extra drive required per drive for
drive is written to another drive for redundancy. mirroring)
High read speed as either disk can be used if one disk
Slow write performance as all drives has to be updated
is busy

Array will function even if any one of the drive fails

Minimum 2 drives required

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RAID Levels

 RAID 5 (or) Distributed Parity

 RAID 5 is mostly used in enterprise levels. RAID 5 work by distributed parity method. Parity
info will be used to rebuild the data. It rebuilds from the information left on the remaining
good drives. This will protect our data from drive failure.

 Assume we have 4 drives, if one drive fails and while we replace the failed drive, we can
rebuild the replaced drive from parity information's. Parity information’s are Stored in all 4
drives, if we have 4 numbers of 1TB hard-drive. The parity information will be stored in 256GB
in each drivers and other 768GB in each drives will be defined for Users. RAID 5 can be survive
from a single Drive failure, If drives fails more than 1 will cause loss of data’s.

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RAID Levels

 RAID 5 (or) Distributed Parity

• Excellent Performance
• Reading will be extremely very good in speed.
• Writing will be Average, slow if we won’t use a Hardware RAID Controller.
• Rebuild from Parity information from all drives.
• Full Fault Tolerance.
• 1 Disk Space will be under Parity.
• Can be used in file servers, web servers, very important backups.

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 RAID Levels

 RAID 6 Two Parity Distributed Disk

 RAID 6 is same as RAID 5 with two parity distributed system. Mostly used in a
large number of arrays. We need minimum 4 Drives, even if there 2 Drive fails,
we can rebuild the data while replacing new drives.

 Very slower than RAID 5, because it writes data to all 4 drivers at same time.
Will be average in speed while we using a Hardware RAID Controller. If we have
6 numbers of 1TB hard-drives 4 drives will be used for data and 2 drives will be
used for Parity.

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RAID Levels

 RAID 6 Two Parity Distributed Disk

 Poor Performance.
 Read Performance will be good.
 Write Performance will be Poor if we not using a Hardware RAID Controller.
 Rebuild from 2 Parity Drives.
 Full Fault tolerance.
 2 Disks space will be under Parity.
 Can be Used in Large Arrays.
 Can be use in backup purpose, video streaming, used in large scale.

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RAID Levels

 RAID 10 (or) Mirror & Stripe

 RAID 10 can be called as 1+0 or 0+1. This will do both works of Mirror &
Striping. Mirror will be first and stripe will be the second in RAID 10. Stripe will be
the first and mirror will be the second in RAID 01. RAID 10 is better comparing to
01.

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RAID Levels

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RAID Levels

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