AMCC 9650SE, 9550SX, 9500S, 9590SE manual RAID 6 Configuration Example

Understanding RAID Levels and Concepts

Figure 4. RAID 6 Configuration Example

RAID 10

RAID 10 is a combination of striped and mirrored arrays for fault tolerance and high performance.

When drives are configured as a striped mirrored array, the disks are configured using both RAID 0 and RAID 1 techniques, thus the name RAID 10 (see Figure ?). A minimum of four drives are required to use this technique. The first two drives are mirrored as a fault tolerant array using RAID 1. The third and fourth drives are mirrored as a second fault tolerant array using RAID 1. The two mirrored arrays are then grouped as a striped RAID 0 array using a two tier structure. Higher data transfer rates are achieved by leveraging TwinStor and striping the arrays.

In addition, RAID 10 arrays offer a higher degree of fault tolerance than RAID 1 and RAID 5, since the array can sustain multiple drive failures without data loss. For example, in a twelve-drive RAID 10 array, up to six drives can fail (half of each mirrored pair) and the array will continue to function. Please note that if both halves of a mirrored pair in the RAID 10 array fail, then all of the data will be lost.

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