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The Raid guide for beginners
This is a guide set out to allow people new to the field of raid to give them...
From alistairsenior
1.Explain the RAID terminology. (What isRAID)
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
RAID
is an acronym first defined byDavid A. Patterson,Garth A. Gibson, andRandy Katzat
theUniversity of California, Berkeleyin 1987 to describe a
redundant array of inexpensivedisks
,
a technology that allowed computer users to achieve high levels of storage reliabilityfrom low-cost and less reliable PC-class disk-drive components, via the technique of arrangingthe devices into arrays for redundancy.Marketers representing industry RAID manufacturers later reinvented the term to describe a
redundant array of
independent
disks
as a means of dissociating a "low cost" expectation fromRAID technology.
"RAID" is now used as anumbrella termfor computer data storageschemes that can divide and
replicatedataamong multiple hard disk drives. The different schemes/architectures are named bythe word RAID followed by a number, as in RAID 0, RAID 1, etc. RAID's various designsinvolve two key design goals: increasedata reliabilityand/or increaseinput/outputperformance.
When multiple physical disks are set up to use RAID technology, they are said to be
in
a
RAID
array. This array distributes data across multiple disks, but the array is seen by the computer user andoperating systemas one single disk. RAID can be set up to serve several different purposes.
Purpose and basics
Redundancy
is achieved by either writing the same data to multiple drives (known as
mirroring
),or collecting data (known as
parity data
) across the array, calculated such that the failure of one(or possibly more, depending on the type of RAID) disks in the array will not result in loss of data. A failed disk may be replaced by a new one, and the lost data reconstructed from theremaining data and the parity data.
How Parity Is Calculated, And How Failed Drives AreRebuilt
Parity data in a RAID environment is calculated using the BooleanXOR function. For example,here is a simple RAID 4 three-disk setup consisting of two drives that hold 8 bits of data eachand a third drive that will be used to hold parity data.Drive 1:
01101101
Drive 2:
11010100
To calculate parity data for the two drives, an XOR is performed on their data.i.e.
01101101
XOR
11010100
=
10111001
The resulting parity data,
10111001
, is then stored on Drive 3, the dedicated parity drive.Should any of the three drives fail, the contents of the failed drive can be reconstructed on areplacement (or "hot spare") drive by subjecting the data from the remaining drives to the sameXOR operation. If Drive 2 were to fail, its data could be rebuilt using the XOR results of thecontents of the two remaining drives, Drive 3 and Drive 1:Drive 3:
10111001
Drive 1:
01101101
i.e.
10111001
XOR
01101101
=
11010100
The result of that XOR calculation yields Drive 2's contents.
11010100
is then stored on Drive 2,fully repairing the array. This same XOR concept applies similarly to larger arrays, using anynumber of disks. In the case of a RAID 3 array of 12 drives, 11 drives participate in the XOR calculation shown above and yield a value that is then stored on the dedicated parity drive.
Organization
Organizing disks into a redundant array decreases the usable storage capacity. For instance, a 2-disk RAID 1 array loses half of the total capacity that would have otherwise been available using both disks independently, and a RAID 5 array with several disks loses the capacity of one disk.Other types of RAID arrays are arranged, for example, so that they are faster to write to and readfrom than a single disk.There are various combinations of these approaches giving different trade-offs of protectionagainst data loss, capacity, and speed. RAID levels 0, 1, and 5 are the most commonly found,and cover most requirements.
•
RAID 0 (striped disks) distributes data across multiple disks in a way that gives improvedspeed at any given instant. If one disk fails, however, all of the data on the array will belost, as there is neither parity nor mirroring. In this regard, RAID 0 is somewhat of amisnomer, in that RAID 0 is non-redundant. A RAID 0 array requires a minimum of twodrives. A RAID 0 configuration can be applied to a single drive provided that the RAIDcontroller is hardware and not software (i.e. OS-based arrays) and allows for suchconfiguration. This allows a single drive to be added to a controller already containinganother RAID configuration when the user does not wish to add the additional drive tothe existing array. In this case, the controller would be set up as RAID only (as opposedto SCSI only (no RAID)), which requires that each individual drive be a part of some sortof RAID array.
•
RAID 1 mirrors the contents of the disks, making a form of 1:1 ratio realtime backup.The contents of each disk in the array are identical to that of every other disk in the array.A RAID 1 array requires a minimum of two drives. RAID 1 mirrors, though during thewriting process copy the data identically to both drives, would not be suitable as a permanent backup solution, as RAID technology by design allows for certain failures totake place.
•
RAID 3 or 4 (striped disks with dedicated parity) combines three or more disks in a waythat protects data against loss of any one disk.Fault tolerance is achieved by adding anextra disk to the array and dedicating it to storing parity information. The storagecapacity of the array is reduced by one disk. A RAID 3 or 4 array requires a minimum of three drives: two to hold striped data, and a third drive to hold parity data.
•
RAID 5 (striped disks with distributed parity) combines three or more disks in a way that protects data against the loss of any one disk. It is similar to RAID 3 but the parity is notstored on one dedicated drive, instead parity information is interspersed across the drivearray. The storage capacity of the array is a function of the number of drives minus thespace needed to store parity. The maximum number of drives that can fail in any RAID 5configuration without losing data is only one. Losing two drives in a RAID 5 array isreferred to as a "double fault" and results in data loss.
•
RAID 6 (striped disks with dual parity) combines four or more disks in a way that protects data against loss of any two disks.
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