RAID Redundant Array of Independent Disks

Copyright 2005 Wipro Technologies

Wipro confidential 1

RAID Common Characteristics

1. 2. 3. A set of physical disk drives viewed by the OS as a single logical drive. Data are distributed across the array of disk drives. Redundant disk capacity is used to store parity information, which guarantees data recoverability in case of a disk failure.

Copyright 2005 Wipro Technologies

Wipro confidential 2

RAID Structure
RAID provides reliability via redundancy. RAID is arranged into six different levels:

Copyright 2005 Wipro Technologies

Wipro confidential 3

RAID Technologies
Disk mirroring Drive duplexing Disk striping

Copyright 2005 Wipro Technologies

Wipro confidential 4

Disk mirroring
The process of reading and writing data on two drives simultaneously is called disk mirroring. The data on each drive would be identical. One will be the primary drive while the other is a mirror drive. A copy of the primary drive is made to the mirror drive This drive will not be used unless the primary failed

Copyright 2005 Wipro Technologies

Wipro confidential 5

 Copyright 2005 Wipro Technologies

Wipro confidential 6

Drive duplexing
When data has to be even safe, use two different controllers. Even if primary controller fails, the second one can be still working fine. Faster than drive mirroring since we use two controllers to write data.

Copyright 2005 Wipro Technologies

Wipro confidential 7

Drive striping
Two types: With parity, Without parity. Disk striping (Without parity) is to spread data among multiple drives. It is a very fast way to read and write to hard disk drives. If either drive fails all data is lost.

Copyright 2005 Wipro Technologies

Wipro confidential 8

Disk Striping with parity

This protects data. This technology adds extra information called parity data that can be used to rebuild data if one of the drives fail. It required three drives. Disk striping with parity combines the best of disk mirroring and plain disk striping. Majority of network servers use this technology

Copyright 2005 Wipro Technologies

Wipro confidential 9

 Copyright 2005 Wipro Technologies

Wipro confidential 10

RAID techniques
There are seven official levels of RAID, numbered 0 through 6. RAID 0 (Disk striping) RAID 1 (Disk mirroring\duplexing) RAID 2 (Disk striping with multiple parity) RAID 3&4 (Disk striping with dedicated parity) RAID 5 (Disk striping with distributed parity) RAID 6 (Super disk striping with distributed parity)

Copyright 2005 Wipro Technologies

Wipro confidential 11

RAID 0 (Disk striping)

Required at least two drives. Does not provide redundancy to data If any one drive fails, all data is lost.

Copyright 2005 Wipro Technologies

Wipro confidential 12

 Copyright 2005 Wipro Technologies

Wipro confidential 13

RAID1(Disk mirroring\duplexing)
Requires at least two hard drives Ultimate in safety, but you lose storage space since data is duplicated

Copyright 2005 Wipro Technologies

Wipro confidential 14

 Copyright 2005 Wipro Technologies

Wipro confidential 15

RAID(Disk striping with multiple parity drives)

A weird RAID idea that never saw any use. Soon vanished from market

Copyright 2005 Wipro Technologies

Wipro confidential 16

 Copyright 2005 Wipro Technologies

Wipro confidential 17

RAID3&4(Disk striping with dedicated parity)

Combined dedicated rives with dedicated parity drives Quickly replaced by RAID 5

Copyright 2005 Wipro Technologies

Wipro confidential 18

 Copyright 2005 Wipro Technologies

Wipro confidential 19

RAID5(Disk striping with distributed parity)

Instead of dedicated parity and data drives, RAID 5 distributes data and parity information evenly across all drives. This is the fastest way to provide data redundancy Most common RAID implementation that requires at least 3 drives The storage is limited to one drive

Copyright 2005 Wipro Technologies

Wipro confidential 20

 Copyright 2005 Wipro Technologies

Wipro confidential 21

RAID6(Super disk striping with distributed parity)

This is RAID 5 with the added capability of asynchronous and cached data transmission. This is Super RAID 5

Copyright 2005 Wipro Technologies

Wipro confidential 22

 Copyright 2005 Wipro Technologies

Wipro confidential 23

Multiple RAID solutions

Combining two or more RAID types to get one solution. Not most commonly used.

Copyright 2005 Wipro Technologies

Wipro confidential 24

RAID Levels

Copyright 2005 Wipro Technologies

Wipro confidential 25

THANK YOU

Copyright 2005 Wipro Technologies

Wipro confidential 26