RAID stands for Redundant Array of Independent Disks (RAID). That means that RAID is a way of logically putting multiple disks together into a single array. The basic concept of RAID is that these disks working together will have the speed and reliability of a more expensive disk. The exact speed and reliability you’ll achieve from RAID depend on the type of RAID you’re using.

The PPSC Labs RAID Calculator will give you an estimate of how many drives will be utilized in different RAID levels with the understanding that your actual utilization may vary. This calculator only gives an approximation which is a great place to start, but your PSSC Team can help you determine the ideal configuration for you.

RAID is essential if uptime and availability are important to your organization. Backups will help ensure you from a catastrophic data loss. The challenge is that restoring large amounts of data, like when you experience a drive failure, can take many hours. Those backups can also be hours or days old, costing you all the data stored or changed since the last backup. RAID allows you to handle the failure of one or more drives without suffering any data loss and possibly without any actual downtime.

RAID is also useful if you are having disk IO issues, where applications are waiting on the disk to perform tasks. Going with RAID will provide you additional throughput by allowing you to read and write data from multiple drives instead of a single drive. Additionally, if you go with hardware RAID, the hardware RAID card will include additional memory to be used as a cache, reducing the strain put on the physical hardware which will increase your overall performance.

No RAID – This is a good solution if you are able to endure several hours of downtime and/or potential data loss while you restore your files from backups.

RAID 0 – Good if your data is unimportant and can be lost, but performance is still critical. A good example of this would be when you are handling a cache.

RAID 1 – If you are looking to inexpensively gain additional data redundancy and/or read speeds the RAID 1 might make sense for you. RAID 1 is also a good foundational level for those looking to achieve high uptime and increase their performance of backups.

RAID 5 | RAID 6 – This is a good solution if you have high read environments such as web servers or extremely large storage arrays as a single object. This will perform worse than RAID 1 on writes of data. If your environment is write-heavy, or you don’t need more space than is allowed on a disk with RAID 1 then you might find that RAID 1 is a more effective solution.

RAID 10 – RAID 10 is a good all-around solution that provides you with additional read and write speed as well as additional redundancy.

RAID 50 – RAID 50 is also known as RAID 5+0 and combines distributed parity (RAID 5) with striping RAID 0. Raid 50 requires a minimum of 6 drives. RAID 50 is best used for applications that require high reliability.

RAID 60 – RAID 60 is a type of storage that combines multiple RAID 6 sets with RAID 0. Dual parity allows the failure of two drives in each RAID 6 array while striping increases capacity and performance without adding additional drives to each RAID 6 set. If you want to know more about RAID 60 contact your PSSC Labs team at 949-380-7288 to learn more.

RAID does not equal 100 percent uptime.

Nothing can provide you with 100 percent uptime. RAID is another tool in the systems administrator’s toolbox meant to help minimize downtime and availability issues. There is still a risk of a RAID card failure, though that is a slightly significantly lower than a mechanical HDD drive failure.

RAID does not replace backups.

Nothing can replace a well-planned and frequently tested backup implementation so while can help it will never replace a backup. RAID will only provide redundancy for your data at the disk level so RAID is no replacement for a backup system. RAID is another tool in the systems administrator’s toolbox meant to help minimize downtime and availability issues. RAID does not replace backups. RAID will only provide redundancy for your data at the disk level so RAID is no replacement for an enterpise backup system.

RAID will not protect you against data corruption, human error, or even security vulnerabilities.

RAID should be just ONE part of your plan to keep your critical business data safe. RAID cannot protect you against human error, data corruption, or security vulnerabilities.

Essentially RAID is meant to provide redundant systems storage. RAID isn’t always the best option for virtualization and high-availability failovers. RAID may not be the best option so talk to your PSSC Labs Team to discuss your RAID specifications in more detail.

RAID does not mean that you can dynamically increase the size of the RAID array.

If you need more disk space, you cannot simply add another drive to the array. You are likely going to have to start from scratch which includes rebuilding and reformatting the array.

RAID isn’t always the best option for virtualization and high-availability failover.

RAID may not be the best option for your virtualization or high-availability failover needs. RAID is not a requirement of these types of systems, but instead, RAID protects against data loss in case one of the drives on which virtual machines or active clusters are running fails. RAID is another tool that can help you meet your needs. To learn more talk to your PSSC Labs Team to learn more how RAID can help your business.