Promise Technology 66 Pro user manual RAID Setup

SuperTrak66™ User's Manual Chapter 6

RAID Setup

This chapter discusses the various types of RAID arrays, their applications, including performance and reliability considerations, and general maintenance information. Given the variety of applications for RAID systems, the various RAID levels each have advantages and disadvantages.

Determining what RAID level to use for your system is an important step. To help guide you, we have divided this chapter into four parts:

∙Application Scenarios describe different types of RAID system usage and match them to appropriate RAID configurations.

∙RAID Implementation is for those systems which don’t match well with our given application scenarios. The section covers general principles of each possible RAID level, and what types of system usage would benefit from those levels.

∙RAID Management & Operations covers various fault scenarios, rebuilding/synchronization of drives, and drive partitioning/formatting which may be encountered during typical use.

∙Configuration Ideas cover organizational models of array systems that use the previously-documented array types. It also points out additional advantages of various options.

This is certainly not intended as a complete, nor definitive reference on RAID technology applications, but merely serves as a first step to understanding the principles and proper usage of RAID. Please see Appendix A: Technology Background for more details on the functionality of RAID systems.

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