RAID

Tony Rogerson SQL Server MVP Torver Computer Consultants

www.sqlserverfaq.com tonyrogerson@sqlserver.eu.com

Agenda

RAID Levels and explanation. SCSI ATA Backup media

RAID

Most popular levels are RAID 0, 1, 5 and 10. Array of inexpensive disks. More disks give more heads give faster transfer rates.

RAID 0

Disk striping (data is written across disks in a stripe). Stripe size is a multiple of 2, size depends on the RAID level in use, RAID 1 and 0 have a high stripe size, usually 128K whereas RAID 5 has a low stripe size usually 16K. RAID 0 offers no redundancy (no fault tolerance). The 2 128K stripes of data are written in parallel.
Controller

128K Data
Disk 0

256K Data

Disk 1

128K Data

RAID 1 (Mirroring)

Minimum of 2 disks, literally one disk is a complete mirror of the other. One fails the other takes over When reading can read both disks (two copies of the data) very fast read and write access.
Controller

256K Data
Disk 0

256K Data

Disk 1

256K Data

Duplexing

Controller Mirroring (2 controllers) each with a mirror. RAID 0, 1, 10 or 5 )

Controller Disk 0 Software mirroring (RAID1) Controller Disk 0 Disk 1 RAID 0, 1, 10 or 5 ) Disk 1

RAID 10 or RAID 01

RAID 10 is mirroring (1) then striping (0) RAID 01 is striping (0) then mirroring (1)
RAID 1+0 RAID 0+1
256K Data 128K Data 128K Data

256K Data

128K Data 128K Data

Disk 0

Disk 2

Disk 0

Disk 2

Disk 1
1. 2. 3. 4.

Disk 3
1. 2. 3.

Disk 1

Disk 3

Write Single Stripe Mirror Write Single Stripe Mirror

Write Single Stripe Write Single Stripe Mirror

RAID 10 or RAID 01

Minimum of 4 disks because data needs mirroring and striping. Massive difference when comes to fault tolerance so be careful! RAID 10 allows for more fault tolerance any disk can go so long as it has a mirror. RAID 01 has poor fault tolerance loose 1 disk in both mirrors and array fails. Make absolutely sure you are getting what you think you are getting there is a difference!!

RAID 5

Minimum of 3 disks required. Uses parity to recalculate data in case of disk failure (an EOR formula). Critical failure occurs on failure of 2 disks. Performance degradation on single disk failure. Uses a smaller stripe size to aid parity calculation.
Controller

16K Data
Disk 0 16K Data Disk 1 16K Parity Disk 1

256K Data

RAID 5 Data Calculation

EOR to calc parity and EOR to re-calc data

Stripe 1 goes to Disk 1 -> 10101010 (170) Stripe 2 goes to Disk 2 -> 10111101 (189) Parity Stripe to Disk 3 is 10101010 EOR 10111101 -----------00010111 (23) 00010111 is written to disk 3 .
Recovery (Disk 2 has failed) Take data from Disk 1 10101010 EOR Take parity from Disk 3 00010111 -----------Data on Disk 2 is 10111101

Hot/Online Spare

Completely redundant disk assigned to the array. On disk failure spare is built from mirror (raid 1) or parity (raid 5). Not instantaneous; time taken to rebuild disk can be hours exposed until disk is built. When building spare capacity may reduce. Should be same size, speed etc of other disks in the array.

RAID Recommendations

RAID 10 offers best performance and fault tolerance because.

Has two copies of the data it can read from to balance the load across more disks. Array survives so long as a disk mirror is intact; so on an 8 disk array you can lose 4 disks so long as they are mirrors.

RAID 5 offers higher capacity if space in the server is tight; costs less (not an issue now a days with disks costing around 300)

Can only lose 1 disk in the array before critical failure

SCSI update (Oct 2003)

Current mainstream level is U160 / U320 Speed either 10Krpm or 15Krpm Size 18GB -> 146GB Cost, faster disks (15Krpm) tend to be a bit more expensive you pay for speed rather than capacity now; 36GB (10Krpm = 114, 15Krpm = 244); 146GB 10Krpm = 459

Prices from www.scan.co.uk on 13th Oct.

ATA

Disk access speeds less than SCSI; disks are slower - <= 7200rpm. Good data transfer speeds on a par with SCSI U160. Ideal for holding online backups. 1TB RAID 0 array (4x250GB) costs just 900.

New Backup Media

Standard is DLT or DAT but other tape media in use. Tape is not reliable. New external disks USB2.0 or Firewire; 80Gb for approx 130; speeds up to 10MBytes/second. Disk is actually an ATA disk; these disks have a massively longer life than tapes and they are less delicate and give faster access times.

Further Reading

Jim Gray has done research into Serial ATA and Parallel ATA performance and reliability, they are using the TerraServer data to do the benchmarking/testing.
http://research.microsoft.com/~Gray/

Comparison between Serial and Parallel ATA

http://www.tech-report.com/reviews/2003q1/ata-comparo/index

Question and Answers

Thanks for listening!