What RAID should I use, Reasons and why

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Note

by Wizard-09 · 9 years ago In reply to What RAID should I use, R ...

Not everything comes on a plate, I don't think you will get the answer here as it's a school project, google RAID look at the configure from there pick the best one and explain your choice good luck.

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He could get plenty of information

by neilb@uk · 9 years ago In reply to Note

If I can manage to start an argument. :)

Not quite as bad as an OS battle but RAID can sometimes bring out die-hard proponents as well.

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raid 10

by mark · 9 years ago In reply to What RAID should I use, R ...

provides multiple disks for speed and mirror for redundancy.

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And costs more - nearly twice as much

by neilb@uk · 9 years ago In reply to raid 10

And, if you RAID 5 the same number of disks that you would have needed for RAID 10, you'll get nearly twice the space and much better read performance. The write stats will be just as good if you've got a good controller with zippy enough parity calculation.

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I see

by Wizard-09 · 9 years ago In reply to And costs more - nearly t ...

What you mean, some people think the higher the number the better it must be lets go with RAID 10, I 2 think 5 would be best in this case, but I beleive that he should figure that out for himself :)

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is that right?

by mark · 9 years ago In reply to And costs more - nearly t ...

Why do they have raid 10 as an option?

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Because they want to sell you disks :)

by neilb@uk · 9 years ago In reply to is that right?

There are certain places where Microsoft Best Practise - Exchange logs, for example, mandates RAID 1+0. The standard documentation on different RAID systems comes to similar conclusions. But that has been the way since Exchange 5.5 and doesn't really take into account the changes in drive types, transfer speed and so on. Google around and check the current thinking and you'll be surprised. I did my own RAID 5 vs RAID 1+0 Jetstress tests on our SAN and there wasn't much difference at all. We set up our first server according to a "best practise" strategy and our second one according to a "save some money" strategy and you can't tell them apart performance-wise.

If you've got a database striped over 8+1 disks in a RAID 5 then you're reading off more spindles that a 10-disk RAID 1+0.

It's really worth doing all of the numbers for yourself. It's amazing the difference that you can make if you save the costs of, say, three disks and put some of the money into more controller cache!

:)

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However...

by Jellimonsta · 9 years ago In reply to Because they want to sell ...

A small shop is not going to have a SAN, and most likely will not have 8-9 SCSI disks for DAS. It may or may not be worth them doing NAS, but then performance is a wash.
If it is a small shop with limited data, then MS SBS and a few DAS SCSI disks in RAID 5 or 1+0 should do the trick. However, for the purpose of this school test, I imagine an RND server for graphics files will need optimal storage space and write speeds. I would recommend 1+0 as if they have the budget for RND, they can afford a few more disks.
This can definitely turn into an arguement though.

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Who's going to argue

by neilb@uk · 9 years ago In reply to However...

When I am undeniably right.

http://it.anandtech.com/printarticle.aspx?i=3532

Longish but interesting

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