Level 0
Striping; this level offers no redundancy, but stripes multiple physical disks into one logical drive. There is also some enhancement in performance for IO intensive tasks. This level requires a minimum of two physical drives.
Benefits: Best performing, simple design, no overhead.
Disadvantages: Not true RAID (not redundant), probability of one disk failing is approximately half as likely as two, which means that RAID 0 would be effectively twice as likely to fail as compared to one drive.
ServePath can configure this type of RAID configuration on a Professional Services basis. Please contact your sales representative for more information.
Level 1
Mirroring; this level offers data redundancy by allowing one physical drive to fail. However, due to the mirroring model, RAID 1 on two disks will result in one mirrored volume equal to the size of one disk.
Benefits: Data redundancy, ability to sustain drive failure.
Disadvantages: High overhead (100%), expensive (N/2 capacity).
The ServePath AdvancedPathServer is configured with Level 1 RAID.
Level 5
Distributed parity; this level is the most complex, distributing parity across the entire array. In order to facilitate the distributed parity model, one disk's capacity is required (N-1 capacity). This level requires a minimum of three physical drives.
Benefits: Good overall performance, ability to sustain drive failure.
Disadvantages: Disk failure impacts performance, most complex design, potentially difficult to rebuild.
The ServePath UltraPath Server is configured with Level 5 RAID.
Level 10
Striping + Mirroring; this level takes advantage of the performance increase with striping and the redundancy offered by mirroring. The minimum configuration for this configuration is two sets of two physical disks in RAID 1, striped together.
Benefits: Very good performance, fault tolerant.
Disadvantages: Hard to scale, very expensive, very high overhead.
ServePath can configure this type of advanced RAID configuration on a Professional Services basis. Please contact your sales representative for more information.