HP StorageWorks All-in-One Storage System user guide (440583-005, February 2008)

• Include the appropriate number of physical drives in the arrays to create logical storage elements

of desired sizes.

Arrays

See Figure 11. With an array controller installed in the system, the capacity of several physical drives

(P1–P3) can be logically combined into one or more logical units (L1) called arrays. When this is

done, the read/write heads of all the constituent physical drives are active simultaneously, dramatically

reducing the overall time required for data transfer.

NOTE:

Depending on the storage system model, array configuration may not be possible or necessary.

P1 P3P2

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Figure 11 Configuring arrays from physical drives

Because the read/write heads are simultaneously active, the same amount of data is written to each

drive during any given time interval. Each unit of data is termed a block. The blocks form a set of

data stripes over all the hard drives in an array, as shown in Figure 12.

B11B10 B12

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Figure 12 RAID 0 (data striping) (S1-S4) of data blocks (B1-B12)

For data in the array to be readable, the data block sequence within each stripe must be the same.

This sequencing process is performed by the array controller, which sends the data blocks to the drive

write heads in the correct order.

A natural consequence of the striping process is that each hard drive in a given array contains the

same number of data blocks.

NOTE:

If one hard drive has a larger capacity than other hard drives in the same array, the extra capacity is

wasted because it cannot be used by the array.

All-in-One Storage System 47