HP Smart Array Controllers and basic RAID performance factors

Figure 5. Scaling of 4 KiB Random Read Performance (4 KiB aligned) 8x 6 GiB; drive limited performance

Configuration: Smart Array P421 controller, 2 GiB cache; 15K SAS drives; maximum IOPS measured for queue depth from 1 to 256

Note: RAID 5 measurements with more than 14 drives are for illustrative purposes only. HP does not recommend RAID 5 arrays larger

than 14 drives (depending on tolerance for data loss and type of drive, 14 drives may be too many).

1,000

2,000

3,000

4,000

5,000

6,000

7,000

8,000

9,000

4 Drives

8 Drives

12 Drives

16 Drives

20 Drives

24 Drives

RAID 0

RAID 10

RAID 5

RAID 6

I/O per second (IOPS)