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Which RAID level is the best for your NAS Storage & Data Center?

by Frank David

The proper choice for a RAID level is determined by the specific application and budget of a given data center. It’s important to understand the different levels of RAID and their advantages/disadvantages before you choose any of them for your enterprise NAS data center.

What is RAID in enterprise NAS?

RAID (Redundant Array of Independent Disks) is a storage technology that combines multiple hard drives into one logical unit. This allows you to use all the drives together as if they are one drive. The most common RAID levels for NAS storage are RAID 0, RAID 1, RAID 10, and RAID 5.

What is RAID 0

RAID 0 uses striping or paring of two disks, which means the data is split between both disks. If one disk fails, your data is still safe on the second disk. However, if both disks fail at once, your data will be lost forever because there’s no backup copy on any other disk. The trade-off here is data safety.

When should you use RAID 0

RAID 0 is best used for boosting server performance. That is because multiple disks are doing their work instead of a single one. This distributes the load over to the disks thus improving the I/O rate. However, if you need more redundancy, this may not be the best option. This is better suited to businesses that don’t deal with sensitive data.

What is RAID 1

RAID 1 provides data mirroring. This means your data is duplicated across two disks. If one disk fails, you won’t lose any data because it’s being mirrored on the second disk.

When should you use RAID 1?

RAID 1 is used to achieve a considerable level of redundancy and is considered fault-tolerant. Since data is replicated to another drive, the chances of data loss are minimal. Even if one drive goes bad, all data will still be available on the other drive. This is one of the simplest methods of achieving redundancy and fault tolerance at a low cost.

The downside to this method is the performance. Because the drives are being used to access data and being replicated at the same time, the system with such kind of configuration can suffer from low performance. Furthermore, this method will strip almost half of your storage capacity since half of the storage will be used to replicate the other half.

RAID 10 or RAID 1+0

RAID 10 is also called 1+0 or Stripe Mirroring. It uses striping with multiple mirrors of volumes (striped segments) like RAID 0 but provides better redundancy than either RAID 0 or RAID 1.

When should you use RAID 10?

RAID 10 is an amalgamation of RAID 0 and RAID 1. This RAID level is known to provide the best performance and redundancy. Data centers that deal with sensitive data and have to access that data at faster speeds can choose this option. However, it is to be noted that it can be costly not only in monetary terms but also in terms of storage. Since it uses both striping and mirroring, it requires twice as many disks as other RAID levels. The best NAS systems like StoneFly super scale-out systems configured in multiple clusters usually have this type of RAID configuration.

What is RAID 5

RAID 5 is another fault-tolerant RAID level that is most commonly used in many enterprise NAS servers. With RAID 5, additional parity is used for data recovery and this is further stripped into three or more disks. The data is then recreated from the stripped data and parity block automatically.

A benefit of RAID 5 is that you can hot-swap the drives in case some drives fail. Drives can be replaced easily without shutting down the device. This ensures steady and all-time access to data.

When should you use RAID 5?

Enterprises looking for the best redundancy for their data should choose RAID 5. However, it is to be noted that this RAID level can incur a significant performance lag on servers that have to deal with simultaneous and multiple read/write operations. For enterprises needing fast access to data without any lag, RAID 10 is still the best option.

So that’s it. We hope this article gave you a quick insight into different RAID levels and now you can make up your mind on choosing the best for your NAS storage.

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