Dell S300 Computer Hardware User Manual


 
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Appendix B
Understanding RAID Levels
A PERC S100 controller or PERC S300 controller supports the following
RAID levels:
Table B-1. RAID Levels and Characteristics
RAID Level Main Characteristics Advantages
Volume (can be
created only using the
PERC S100 Virtual
Disk Management
utility or PERC S300
Virtual Disk
Management utility.
Dell OpenManage
Server Administrator
Storage Management
can manage a Volume
but cannot create it.)
NOTE:
Unless
mentioned otherwise,
the term PERC Virtual
Disk Management
utility refers to both the
PERC S100 Virtual Disk
Management utility and
the PERC S300 Virtual
Disk Management
utility
A virtual disk type that links
available space on a single
physical disk and forms a
single logical volume on
which data is stored.
Concatenation allows
access to a single physical
disk.
Concatenation does not
provide performance
benefits or data redundancy.
When a physical disk in a
concatenated virtual disk
fails, data is lost from that
virtual disk. Because there is
no redundancy, data can be
restored only from a
backup.
RAID 0 (striping) Provides the highest
performance, but no data
redundancy. Data in the
virtual disk is striped
(distributed) across two or
more physical disks.
RAID 0 virtual disks are useful
for holding information, such
as the operating system
paging file, where
performance is extremely
important but redundancy is
not.
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