RAID 0 (N+0)

1 4 7 10 2 5 8 11 3 6 9 12

RAID 3 and RAID 4 (N+1)

1 4 7 10 2 5 8 11 3 6 9 12 P P P P

A RAID 0 array is formed by striping data across a group of disks. RAID 0 provides the best possible performance, because all disks work together. However, RAID 0 offers no data redundancy, and the chance of data loss increases as more disks are added to the set. RAID 0 is named RAID 0 because it is not truly RAID. RAID 0 does not provide any redundancy functions. However, since it utilizes multiple physical disks (a key component of each RAID level), it was given RAID designation.

Data is striped across the data disks in the RAID set, and parity information is stored on a dedicated drive. Fault tolerance allows any one disk to fail without service interruption. RAID 3 is optimized for sequential (streaming) access, and requires all disks to be synchronized. RAID 4 is optimized for random access. Each data disk works independently.

RAID 1 (2N)
1 2 3 4 1 2

RAID 5 (N+1)
1 4 7 3 P 4 Data is striped across all disks in the RAID set, and parity information is striped onto all disks along with the data. Fault tolerance allows any one disk to fail without service interruption. RAID 5 has very good read performance and is very cost effective. However, parity must be calculated by the storage processor, striped, and laid out onto the data disks during write operations, which results in a write performance penalty. 10 11 12 2 5 P 3 P 8 P 6 9

Data is written simultaneously and identically to both disks. This provides a complete running copy in case there is drive failure. RAID 1 has very good performance and redundancy, but it doubles the cost of data storage. A mirror is an exact duplicate of a disk, and therefore limited to the size of the disk being mirrored. RAID 1 is a key component of other RAID levels, such as 10 and 0+1.

RAID 2 (N+3)
1 5 9 13 2 6 10 14 3 7 11 15 4 8 12 16 E E E E E E E E E E E E

RAID 6 (N+2)
1 4 7 P 2 5 P P 3 P P 10 P P 8 11 P 6 9 12

Data is striped across the data disks in the RAID set, and Hamming Code information is stored on dedicated drives. Fault tolerance allows any one disk to fail without service interruption. RAID 2 has spectacular read performance, and provides unique features such as on-the-fly data correction. However, it is not cost effective, as the number of drives required for a given capacity is much greater than other RAID levels. RAID 2 is not currently offered by any storage vendor.

Data is striped across all disks in the RAID set, along with two sets of parity information. Fault tolerance allows any two disks to fail without service interruption. RAID 6 has very good read performance but is less cost effective than RAID 5, as more space is required for parity. All drives work together during reads, which provides excellent read performance. However, since parity must be calculated and written twice to the data devices, write performance suffers considerably.

RAID 0+1 (2N)

Stripe Set 1 1 4 7 10 2 5 8 11 3

RAID 10 or 1+0 (2N)

1 6 4 9 7 12 10 Mirror 1 Stripe Set 2 1 1 4 7 10 2 5 8 11 3 6 9 12 4 7 10

2 5 8 11 Mirror 2 2 5 8 11

3 6 9 12 Mirror 3 3 6 9 12

Stripe Set Mirror Set Formed by mixing RAID 0 and RAID 1. Fault tolerance allows any one disk to fail without service interruption. RAID 0+1 is named because of the order in which the RAID operations are performed. RAID 0+1 is a RAID 0 stripe set that is mirrored to create another identical RAID 0 stripe set. Because the disks are striped before the data is mirrored, there are two stripe sets working with identical information. If one drive fails in one stripe set, that entire set of disks will go offline. The other stripe set will still function, however, a second disk failure will cause data access to be interrupted. RAID 0+1 has excellent performance. Large amounts of data can be stored, and since there is no parity being generated, read and write performance is optimal. Although RAID 0+1 is less reliable than RAID 10, it is simpler to implement, and therefore very popular in low-end systems. Formed by mixing RAID 1 and RAID 0. Fault tolerance allows multiple disks to fail without service interruption. RAID 10 is named because of the order in which RAID operations are performed. RAID 10 is a set of RAID 1 mirror sets that are grouped together into a RAID 0 stripe set. Because the disks are mirrored before data is striped across them, one drive in each mirror set can fail without causing service interruption. If two drives in the same mirror set fail, then all data in the RAID set will be lost. RAID 10 has excellent all-around performance. Large amounts of data can be stored, and since there is no parity being generated, read and write performance is optimal.

RAID S (N+1)
RAID S is EMC's proprietary version of parity RAID for Symmetrix storage systems. 000 005 009 1-P RAID S is like RAID 5, but data is not striped across disks. Whole hyper-volumes sit on their own disks, and are provided protection by a dedicated RAID S parity hypervolume. If a hyper-volume fails, its contents can be regenerated by comparing the data and parity volumes within its parity group. If two hyper-volumes in the same parity group fail, the data cannot be recovered. Since RAID S does not utilize all disks during read operations, read performance suffers in comparison to RAID 5, especially when multiple volumes on the same physical disk are heavily used. RAID S does have superior write performance, however, as parity calculations can be offloaded to the individual disk devices.

001

006

010

2-P

002

007

011

3-P

003

008

012

4-P