Promise Technology VTrack M-Class M200i - Manual (Page 255)

Chapter 7: Technology Background
247
Choosing a RAID Level
There are several issues to consider when choosing the RAID Level for your
VTrak disk array. The following discussion summarizes some advantages,
disadvantages, and applications for each choice.
RAID 0
Recommended Applications for RAID 0
• Image Editing
• Pre-Press Applications
• Any application requiring high bandwidth
RAID 1
Recommended Applications for RAID 1
• Accounting
• Payroll
• Financial
• Any application requiring very high availability
Advantages Disadvantages
Implements a striped disk array, the
data is broken down into blocks and
each block is written to a separate disk
drive
I/O performance is greatly improved by
spreading the I/O load across many
channels and drives
No parity calculation overhead is
involved
Not a true RAID because it is not fault-
tolerant
The failure of just one drive will result in
all data in an disk array being lost
Should not be used in mission critical
environments
Advantages Disadvantages
Simplest RAID storage subsystem
design
Can increase read performance by
processing data requests in parallel
since the same data resides on two
different drives
Very high disk overhead - uses only
50% of total capacity