INTRODUCTION:

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RAID, an acronym for redundant array of inexpensive disks or redundant array of

independent disks, is a technology that provides increased storage reliability through 
redundancy, combining multiple low-cost, less-reliable disk drives components into a logical
unit where all drives in the array are interdependent

Features of RAID

 Threaded rebuild process

 Fully kernel-based configuration

 Portability of arrays between Linux machines without reconstruction

 Back grounded array reconstruction using idle system resources

 Hot-swappable drive support

 Automatic CPU detection to take advantage of certain CPU optimizations.

Advantages of RAID

The foremost advantage of using a RAID drive is that it increases the performance and reliability
of the system. The RAID drive is a credible example that could be used in a server. The RAID
increases the parity check and thus it regularly checks for any possibility of a system crash. Disk
stripping is also a hot topic when we discuss about the RAID drives. The performance is much
highlighting and increases a lot when the disk stripping is done. How the performance increases
a lot by the disk stripping? This is actually done by the interleaving of the bytes or the group of
bytes. The interleaving of this sort is done across the multiple drives. By this procedure only one
disk is reading or writing the data. The reading and writing of the data are done in a simultaneous
process.

The mirroring is the complete duplication of the data. Or in the other sense the mirroring is the
100% duplication of the data on two drives. The drives may be considerably the RAID 1. The
concept of parity comes after the concept and application of the mirroring. The parity involves
that the data from the crashed system be matched up with the data that is stored in the other disk.
The parity check is the term allotted for the work it carries out. The procedure involved is done
as described below: the parity is used to calculate the data in the two drives and store the results
in the third drive. In case there are more than two drives the parity check is done on all of them
and the results are stored on a completely altogether different drive. The preferable device may
be the RAID 3 or the RAID 5. And the failed drive is replaced.
Disadvantages of RAID

A major disadvantage regarding the RAID drive is that there needs to be written the drivers for a
Network Operating System (NOS). Hence the major fact and also the most important usage of
the RAID system is that it is essentially designed and extensively used in a server. So when the
server comes into the picture, there obviously has to be a network.

Hence the device drivers should be included so as to design the system. The design is a quite
complex process as far as the RAID is concerned. Another disadvantage regarding the RAID is
that it is very much difficult for an administrator to configure the RAID system. The ability to
dynamically enlarge the RAID server is also complex process; especially for those administrators
who are the IS managers and also the LAN administrators.

Also the major disadvantage is that the system should support the RAID drives. Most of the
RAID drives include the different types like the RAID 0, RAID 1, and RAID 2 etc. Hence if the
server system is using a different type of RAID drive and that is not supported by the system
then the problem of availability may arise.

The situation involves the determination of the RAID drives that are needed because some of the
systems might support some different types of RAID drives and the other systems may support
some different types of RAID drives. The DGR technology allows the administrator of any
network system to reconfigure the Storage Dimensions RAID System. The DGR here stands for
the Storage Dimensions Dynamic Growth and Reconfiguration. Along with the disadvantages
also the RAID system offers a lot of growth and stability and the advantages override these
things. Hence RAID is still the most widely used server even along with the above mentioned
disadvantages.

RAID: HARDWARE VS SOFTWARE

There are two possible approaches to RAID: Hardware RAID and Software RAID.

Hardware RAID

The hardware-based system manages the RAID subsystem independently from the host and
presents to the host only a single disk per RAID array.

An example of a hardware RAID device would be one that connects to a SCSI controller and
presents the RAID arrays as a single SCSI drive. An external RAID system moves all RAID
handling "intelligence" into a controller located in the external disk subsystem. The whole
subsystem is connected to the host via a normal SCSI controller and appears to the host as a
single disk.

RAID controllers also come in the form of cards that act like a SCSI controller to the operating
system, but handle all of the actual drive communications themselves. In these cases, you plug
the drives into the RAID controller just like you would a SCSI controller, but then you add them
to the RAID controller's configuration, and the operating system never knows the difference.

Software RAID

Software RAID implements the various RAID levels in the kernel disk (block device) code. It
also offers the cheapest possible solution: Expensive disk controller cards or hot-swap
chassis [1]are not required, and software RAID works with cheaper IDE disks as well as SCSI
disks. With today's fast CPUs, software RAID performance can excel against hardware RAID.

The MD driver in the Linux kernel is an example of a RAID solution that is completely hardware
independent. The performance of a software-based array is dependent on the server CPU
performance and load.

DIFFERENT LEVELS OF RAID AND LINEAR SUPPORT:

RAID LEVELS AND TYPES

RAID, an acronym of Redundant Array of Independent (Inexpensive) Disks is the talk of the
day. These are an array of disk to give more power, performance, fault tolerance and
accessibility to the data, as a single storage system. It's not mere combination of disks but all the
disks are combined providing standard MTBF (mean time before failure) reliability scheme;
otherwise chances are performance would be affected drastically if disks are not combined as a
single storage unit. 

All the RAID types and models are commonly classified as RAID levels, since RAID
represented by a higher number is regarded to be superior, more efficient, high-performance
array than the low numbered RAID.   

RAID 0 – STRIPING
It is the Stripped Disk Array with no fault tolerance and it requires at least 2 drives to be
implemented. Due to no redundancy feature, RAID 0 is considered to be the lowest ranked
RAID level. Striped data mapping technique is implemented for high performance at low cost.
The I/O performance is also improved as it is loaded across many channels. Regeneration,
Rebuilding and functional redundancy are some salient features of RAID 0. 

RAID 1 - Mirroring: 

It is the Mirroring (Shadowing) Array meant to provide high performance. RAID 1 controller

is able to perform 2 separate parallel reads or writes per mirrored pair. It also requires at least 2
drives to implement a non-redundant disk array. High level of availability, access and reliability
can be achieved by entry-level RAID 1 array. With full redundancy feature available, need of
readability is almost negligible. Controller configurations and storage subsystem design is the
easiest and simplest amongst all RAID levels. 

RAID 0+1:
 
It is the RAID array providing high data transference performance with at least 4 disks needed to
implement the RAID 0+1 level. It's a unique combination of stripping and mirroring with all the
best features of RAID 0 and RAID 1 included such as fast data access and fault tolerance at
single drive level. The multiple stripe segments have added high I/O rates to the RAID
performance and it is the best solution for maximum reliability.

RAID 3 works on the Parallel Transfer with Parity technique. The least number of disks
required to implement the RAID array is 3 disks. In the RAID 3, data blocks are striped and
written on data drives and then the stripe parity is generated, saved and afterwards used to verify
the disk reads. Read and write data transfer rate is very high in RAID 3 array and disk failure
causes insignificant effects on the overall performance of the RAID. 

RAID 4: 

RAID 4 requires a minimum of 3 drives to be implemented. It is composed of independent disks

with shared parity to protect the data. Data transaction rate for Read is exceptionally high and
highly aggregated. Similarly, the low ratio of parity disks to data disks indicates high efficiency. 

RAID 5: 

RAIDS 5 is Independent Distributed parity block of data disks with a minimum requirement
of at least 3 drives to be implemented and N-1 array capacity. It helps in reducing the write
inherence found in RAID 4. RAID 5 array offers highest data transaction Read rate, medium data
transaction Write rate and good cumulative transfer rate. 

RAID 6: 

RAIDS 6 is Independent Data Disk array with Independent Distributed parity. It is known
to be an extension of RAID level 5 with extra fault tolerance and distributed parity scheme
added. RAID 6 is the best available RAID array for mission critical applications and data storage
needs, though the controller design is very complex and overheads are extremely high.

RAID 7:
RAID 7 is the Optimized Asynchrony array for high I/O and data transfer rates and is
considered to be the most manageable RAID controller available. The overall write performance
is also known to be 50% to 90% better and improved than the single spindle array levels with no
extra data transference required for parity handling. RAID 7 is registered as a standard trademark
of Storage Computer Corporation.

RAID 10: 

RAID 10 is classified as the futuristic RAID controller with extremely high Reliability and
performance embedded in a single RAID controller. The minimum requirement to form a RAID
level 10 controller is 4 data disks. The implementation of RAID 10 is based on a striped array of
RAID 1 array segments, with almost the same fault tolerance level as RAID 1. RAID 10
controllers and arrays are suitable for uncompromising availability and extremely high
throughput required systems and environment. 

With all the significant RAID levels discussed here briefly, another important point to add is that
whichever level of RAID is used regular and consistent data backup maintenance using tape
storage is must as the regular tape storage is best media to recover from lost data scene

Linear RAID :

Linear RAID is a simple grouping of drives to create a larger virtual drive. In linear RAID,
the chunks are allocated sequentially from one member drive, going to the next drive
only when the first is completely filled. This grouping provides no performance benefit,
as it is unlikely that any I/O operations will be split between member drives. Linear RAID
also offers no redundancy, and in fact decreases reliability -- if any one member drive
fails, the entire array cannot be used. The capacity is total of all member disks.
CONCLUSION

RAID technology can be difficult to understand, especially for the beginner. Do go through the
above tips to understand it so that you can make better purchase decisions when building your
next computer system.

 
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