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This series will be titled Preparation for the setting up RAID ‘s through
Parts 1-9 and covers the following topics.
1. RAID0 = Striping
2. RAID1 = Mirroring
3. RAID5 = Single Disk Distributed Parity
4. RAID6 = Double Disk Distributed Parity
5. RAID10 = Combine of Mirror & Stripe. (Nested RAID)
RAID are managed using mdadm package in most of the Linux
distributions. Let us get a Brief look into each RAID Levels.
In this situation if any one of the drive fails we will loose our data,
because with half of data from one of the disk can’t use to rebuilt the
raid. But while comparing to Write Speed and performance RAID 0 is
Excellent. We need at least minimum 2 disks to create a RAID 0
(Striping). If you need your valuable data don’t use this RAID LEVEL.
1. High Performance.
2. There is Zero Capacity Loss in RAID 0
3. Zero Fault Tolerance.
4. Write and Reading will be good performance.
RAID 1 (or) Mirroring
While we save any data, it will write to both 2TB Drives. Minimum two
drives are needed to create a RAID 1 or Mirror. If a disk failure occurred
we can reproduce the raid set by replacing a new disk. If any one of the
disk fails in RAID 1, we can get the data from other one as there was a
copy of same content in the other disk. So there is zero data loss.
1. Good Performance.
2. Here Half of the Space will be lost in total capacity.
3. Full Fault Tolerance.
4. Rebuilt will be faster.
5. Writing Performance will be slow.
6. Reading will be good.
7. Can be used for operating systems and database for small scale.
RAID 5 (or) Distributed Parity
Assume we have 4 drives, if one drive fails and while we replace the
failed drive we can rebuild the replaced drive from parity informations.
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.
1. Excellent Performance
2. Reading will be extremely very good in speed.
3. Writing will be Average, slow if we won’t use a Hardware RAID
Controller.
4. Rebuild from Parity information from all drives.
5. Full Fault Tolerance.
6. 1 Disk Space will be under Parity.
7. Can be used in file servers, web servers, very important backups.
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.
1. Poor Performance.
2. Read Performance will be good.
3. Write Performance will be Poor if we not using a Hardware RAID
Controller.
4. Rebuild from 2 Parity Drives.
5. Full Fault tolerance.
6. 2 Disks space will be under Parity.
7. Can be Used in Large Arrays.
8. Can be use in backup purpose, video streaming, used in large scale.
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.
If I’m writing a data “TECMINT” in RAID 10 it will save the data as follow.
First “T” will write to both disks and second “E” will write to both disk,
this step will be used for all data write. It will make a copy of every data
to other disk too.
Same time it will use the RAID 0 method and write data as follow “T” will
write to first disk and “E” will write to second disk. Again “C” will write to
first Disk and “M” to second disk.
In this article we have seen what is RAID and which levels are mostly
used in RAID in real environment. Hope you have learned the write-up
about RAID. For RAID setup one must know about the basic Knowledge
about RAID. The above content will fulfil basic understanding about
RAID.
In the next upcoming articles I’m going to cover how to setup and create
a RAID using Various Levels, Growing a RAID Group (Array) and
Troubleshooting with failed Drives and much more.