Dell PowerVault MD3000i Hardware Owner's Manual

Also see for PowerVault MD3000i: Getting started Tuning guide System installation guide User guide Information update

Contents

Dell PowerVault MD3000i Hardware Owner's Manual Manual pdf 32 page image

32 Using Your RAID EnclosureRAID 5RAID 5 uses parity and striping data across all physical disks (distributedparity) to provide high data throughput and data redundancy, especially forsmall random access. RAID 5 is the most versatile RAID level and is suited formulti-user environments where typical I/O size is small and there is a highproportion of read activity.RAID 10RAID 10, a combination of RAID 1 and RAID 0, uses disk striping acrossmirrored disks. It provides high data throughput and complete dataredundancy. Utilizing an even number of physical disks (four or more) createsa RAID level 10 disk group and/or virtual disk. Because RAID levels 1 and 10use disk mirroring, half of the capacity of the physical disks is utilized formirroring. This leaves the remaining half of the physical disk capacity foractual storage. RAID 10 is automatically used when a RAID level of 1 ischosen with four or more physical disks.RAID Level UsageTo ensure best performance, you should select an optimal RAID level whenyou create a system physical disk. The optimal RAID level for your disk arraydepends on a number of factors, including:• Number of physical disks in the disk array• Capacity of the physical disks in the disk array• Need for redundant access to the data (fault tolerance)• Disk performance requirementsRAID 0 is best used for video editing, image editing, prepress applications, orany application requiring high bandwidth.RAID 1 offers fast performance and the best data availability, but also thehighest disk overhead. It is best used for accounting, payroll, or financialapplications.RAID 5 is best used for file, application, database, web, e-mail, news, andintranet servers.RAID 10 works well for medium-sized databases or any environment thatrequires high performance and fault tolerance and moderate-to-mediumcapacity.