Adaptec 44300 RAID Technology Overview, RAID 0 Non-RAID Arrays, Understanding Drive Segments

Appendix B: Understanding RAID ● 65

RAID Technology Overview

RAID is the technology of grouping several physical drives into an array that you can define as one or more logical drives. Each logical drive appears to the operating system as a single drive. This grouping technique greatly enhances logical-drive capacity and performance beyond the physical limitations of a single physical drive.

When you group multiple physical drives into a logical drive, the HostRAID controller can transfer data in parallel from the multiple drives in the array. This parallel transfer yields data- transfer rates that are many times higher than with non-arrayed drives, allowing the system to better meet the throughput (amount of data processed in a given amount of time) or productivity needs of a multi-user network environment.

The ability to respond to multiple data requests provides not only an increase in throughput, but also a decrease in response time. The combination of parallel transfers and simultaneous responses to multiple requests allows disk arrays to provide a high level of performance in network environments.

Understanding Drive Segments

A drive segment is a disk drive or portion of a disk drive that is used to create an array. A disk drive can include both RAID segments (segments that are part of an array) and available segments. Each segment can be part of only one logical device at a time. If a disk drive is not part of any logical device, the entire disk is an available segment.

Stripe-Unit Size

With RAID technology, data is striped across an array of physical drives. This data-distribution scheme complements the way the operating system requests data.

The granularity at which data is stored on one drive of the array before subsequent data is stored on the next drive of the array is called the stripe-unit size.

You can set the stripe-unit size to 16, 32, or 64 KB. You can maximize the performance of your HostRAID controller by setting the stripe-unit size to a value that is close to the size of the system I/O requests. For example, performance in transaction-based environments, which typically involve large blocks of data, might be optimal when the stripe-unit size is set to 32 or 64 KB. However, performance in file and print environments, which typically involve multiple small blocks of data, might be optimal when the stripe-unit size is set to 16 KB.

The collection of stripe units, from the first drive of the array to the last drive of the array, is called a stripe.

RAID 0 (Non-RAID Arrays)

An array with RAID 0 includes two or more disk drives (maximum twelve) and provides data striping, where data is distributed evenly across the disk drives in equal-sized sections.

RAID 0 arrays do not maintain redundant data, so they offer no data protection. However, compared to an equal-sized group of independent disks, a RAID 0 array provides improved I/O performance.