Users guide

Intel® RAID Software User Guide 10
2.2 Selecting a RAID Level
To ensure the best performance, select the optimal RAID level when the system drive is
created. The optimal RAID level for a disk array depends on a number of factors:
• The number of physical drives in the disk array
• The capacity of the physical drives in the array
• The need for data redundancy
• The disk performance requirements
2.2.1 RAID 0 - Data Striping
RAID 0 provides disk striping across all drives in the RAID array. RAID 0 does not
provide any data redundancy, but does offer the best performance of any RAID level.
RAID 0 breaks up data into smaller segments, and then stripes the data segments across
each drive in the array. The size of each data segment is determined by the stripe size.
RAID 0 offers high bandwidth.
Note: R
AID level 0 is not fault tolerant. If a drive in a RAID 0 array fails, the whole virtual disk
(all physical drives associated with the virtual disk) will fail.
By breaking up a large file into smaller segments, the RAID
controller can use both SAS
drive and SATA drives to read or write the file faster. RAID 0 involves no parity
calculations to complicate the write operation. This makes RAID 0 ideal for applications
that require high bandwidth but do not require fault tolerance.
Figure 1. RAID 0 – Data Striping
Table 1. RAID 0 Overview
Uses
Provides high data throughput, especially for large files. Any
environment that does not require fault tolerance.
Strong Points
Provides increased data throughput for large files. No capacity loss
pen
alty for parity.
RAID Adapter
ABCDEF
A
C
E
B
D
F
Data Striping
RAID 0
Available Capacity
N=# disks
C = Disk Capacity
Available Capacity = N*C
RAID 0