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42 Planning: MD3600i Series Storage Array Terms and Concepts
I/O performance is greatly improved by spreading the I/O load across many
physical disks. Although it offers the best performance of any RAID level,
RAID 0 lacks data redundancy. Choose this option only for non-critical data,
because failure of one physical disk results in the loss of all data. Examples of
RAID 0 applications include video editing, image editing, prepress
applications, or any application that requires high bandwidth.
RAID 1
RAID 1 uses disk mirroring so that data written to one physical disk is
simultaneously written to another physical disk. RAID 1 offers fast
performance and the best data availability, but also the highest disk overhead.
RAID 1 is recommended for small databases or other applications that do not
require large capacity. For example, accounting, payroll, or financial
applications. RAID 1 provides full data redundancy.
RAID 5
RAID 5 uses parity and striping data across all physical disks (distributed
parity) to provide high data throughput and data redundancy, especially for
small random access. RAID 5 is a versatile RAID level and is suited for multi-
user environments where typical I/O size is small and there is a high
proportion of read activity such as file, application, database, web, e-mail,
news, and intranet servers.
RAID 6
RAID 6 is similar to RAID 5 but provides an additional parity disk for better
redundancy. RAID 6 is the most versatile RAID level and is suited for multi-
user environments where typical I/O size is small and there is a high
proportion of read activity. RAID 6 is recommended when large size physical
disks are used or large number of physical disks are used in a disk group.
RAID 10
RAID 10, a combination of RAID 1 and RAID 0, uses disk striping across
mirrored disks. It provides high data throughput and complete data
redundancy. Utilizing an even number of physical disks (four or more) creates
a RAID level 10 disk group and/or virtual disk. Because RAID levels 1 and 10
use disk mirroring, half of the capacity of the physical disks is utilized for
mirroring. This leaves the remaining half of the physical disk capacity for
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