Redundant Arrays of Inexpensive Disks or RAID.

("Inexpensive" is sometimes replaced with

"Independent")

The fundamental principle behind RAID is the use of multiple hard disk drives in an array that behaves in
most respects like a single large, fast one.
The use of multiple drives allows the resulting storage subsystem to exceed the capacity, data security,
and performance of the drives that make up the system, to one extent or another.

RAID Benefits
Higher Data Security: This means that the data on the array can withstand even the complete failure of
one hard disk (or sometimes more) without any data loss, and without requiring any data to be restored
from backup. All RAID levels provide some degree of data protection, depending on the exact
implementation, except RAID level 0.

Fault Tolerance: RAID implementations that include redundancy provide a much more reliable overall
storage subsystem than can be achieved by a single disk. This means there is a lower chance of the
storage subsystem as a whole failing due to hardware failures.

Improved Availability: Availability refers to access to data. Good RAID systems improve availability both
by providing fault tolerance and by providing special features that allow for recovery from hardware
faults without disruption.

Increased, Integrated Capacity: By turning a number of smaller drives into a larger array, you add their
capacity together.

Improved Performance: RAID systems improve performance by allowing the controller to exploit the
capabilities of multiple hard disks to get around performance-limiting mechanical issues that plague
individual hard disks.

RAID Costs
Planning and Design: For a decent-sized RAID system, you must allow some resources for planning what
type of RAID will be implemented, deciding on array size, choosing hardware, and so on.

Hardware: Hardware costs include hard disks, enclosures, power supplies, power protection and
possibly a hardware RAID controller.

Software: Most hardware RAID solutions come with all the software you need to operate them. If you
are doing software RAID however, you need an operating system such as Windows NT or Windows 2000
that provides this functionality.

Setup and Training: Simple RAID systems in individual PCs don't really require training, and are easy to
set up. Larger RAID systems can require many hours to set up and configure, and training of IS
professionals may be required.
Maintenance: Enterprise-class RAID systems require ongoing maintenance if they are to continue to
provide the organization with high availability and performance.

Mirroring
Mirroring is one of the two data redundancy techniques used in RAID (the other being parity). In a RAID
system using mirroring, all data in the system is written simultaneously to two hard disks instead of one;
thus the "mirror" concept. The principle behind mirroring is that this 100% data redundancy provides
full protection against the failure of either of the disks containing the duplicated data.

Disadvantages:
It has a high overhead cost, because fully 50% of the drives in the array are reserved for duplicate data;
and it doesn't improve performance as much as data striping does for many applications.

Duplexing
Duplexing is an extension of mirroring that is based on the same principle as that technique. Like in
mirroring, all data is duplicated onto two distinct physical hard drives. Duplexing goes one step beyond
mirroring, however, in that it also duplicates the hardware that controls the two hard drives (or sets of
hard drives).
Duplexing is superior to mirroring in terms of availability because it provides the same protection
against drive failure that mirroring does, but also protects against the failure of either of the controllers.

Striping
Data stripping involves spreading out blocks of each file across multiple disks.

There are number of different RAID levels. The three most common are 0, 3, and 5:
Level 0: Provides data striping (spreading out blocks of each file across multiple disks) but no
redundancy. This improves performance but does not deliver fault tolerance.
Level 1: Provides disk mirroring.
Level 3: Same as Level 0, but also reserves one dedicated disk for error correction data. It provides good
performance and some level of fault tolerance.
Level 5: Provides data striping at the byte level and also stripe error correction information. This results
in excellent performance and good fault tolerance.
RAID 0 uses block-level striping without parity; RAID 3 and RAID 7 use byte-level striping with parity; and
RAID 4, RAID 5 and RAID 6 use block-level striping with parity. Note the distinction between striping with
and without parity: striping by itself involves no redundancy, and therefore, provides no data protection.

Parity:
Parity information, which is redundancy information calculated from the actual data values

Advantages
Compared to mirroring, parity (used with striping) has some advantages and disadvantages. The most
obvious advantage is that parity protects data against any single drive in the array failing without
requiring the 50% "waste" of mirroring; only one of the "N+1" drives contains redundancy information.
Striping with parity also allows you to take advantage of the performance advantages of striping.