UNIT IV RAID

RAID Redundant Array of Inexpensive Disks or Redundant Array of Independent Disks Basic idea is a technology to connect multiple secondary storage devices and use them as a single storage media to provide large storage capacity faster access to reading data redundant data Many different levels of RAID systems differing levels of redundancy, error checking, capacity, and cost

Redundant Array of Independent Disks Concepts Objective: At the end of this presentation you will be able to … Discuss basic RAID technology market positioning Explain the inherent advantages of using RAID Identify appropriate RAID levels to use for specific platforms and applications Goal: Even out the widely different rates of performance improvement of disks against those in memory and microprocessors. Lets take a look at the objectives for this session. By the end of this session you should be able to understand basic market positioning of various host-based RAID technologies; the advantages of using RAID; the characteristics of RAID levels in general; and the RAID levels that are typically used for specific applications and platforms.

Improving Reliability with RAID Redundancy – store extra information that can be used to rebuild information lost in a disk failure. MTBF – Mean Time Between Failure Disadvantage: Additional I/O Operations for Write Extra computation to maintain redundancy Recovery from errors Additional disk capacity to store redundant information

Mean Time Between Failures (MTBF)

Improving Performance with RAID The disk arrays employ the technique of data striping to achieve higher transfer rates.

STRIPING Take file data and map it to different disks Allows for reading data in parallel Striping improves overall I/O performance by allowing multiple I/Os to be serviced in parallel, thus providing high overall transfer rates. It also enables load balancing. Block level striping – Bit level striping file data block 0 block 1 block 2 block 3 Disk 0 Disk 1 Disk 2 Disk 3

Technique for Redundancy Mirroring or Shadowing Data is written redundantly to two identical physical disks that are treated as one logical disk.

RAID 0 In this level, a striped array of disks is implemented. The data is broken down into blocks and the blocks are distributed among disks Each disk receives a block of data to write/read in parallel. It enhances the speed and performance of the storage device. There is no parity and backup in Level 0. RAID 0

RAID 1 RAID 1 uses mirroring techniques. When data is sent to a RAID controller, it sends a copy of data to all the disks in the array. RAID level 1 is also called mirroring and provides 100% redundancy in case of a failure.

RAID 2 RAID 2 records Error Correction Code using Hamming distance for its data, striped on different disks. Like level 0, each data bit in a word is recorded on a separate disk and ECC codes of the data words are stored on a different set disks. Due to its complex structure and high cost, RAID 2 is not commercially available.

RAID 3 RAID 3 stripes the data onto multiple disks. The parity bit generated for data word is stored on a different disk. This technique makes it to overcome single disk failures.

RAID 4 In this level, an entire block of data is written onto data disks and then the parity is generated and stored on a different disk. Note that level 3 uses byte-level striping, whereas level 4 uses block-level striping. Both level 3 and level 4 require at least three disks to implement RAID.

RAID 5 RAID 5 writes whole data blocks onto different disks, but the parity bits generated for data block stripe are distributed among all the data disks rather than storing them on a different dedicated disk.

RAID 6 RAID 6 is an extension of level 5. In this level, two independent parities are generated and stored in distributed fashion among multiple disks. Two parities provide additional fault tolerance. This level requires at least four disk drives to implement RAID.