Hardware RAID vs. Software RAID RAID stands for Redundant Array of Inexpensive Disks. This is a method of improving the performance and reliability of your storage media by using multiple. A redundant array of independent disks (RAID) can be used to improve the I/O performance and therefore offer faster transfer rates. Software RAID. There are two main ways of setting up your RAID system; first, there is a hardware setup; it involves having your host computer (or it could be a server), and a RAID controller in between, which in turn, controls the RAID system itself. With software RAID your data can be split across different enclosures for complete redundancy - one enclosure can completely stop working and your data is still ok. With hardware RAID, if the enclosure fails, you can lose all your data. With cheaper hardware RAID you can also lose data if.
Jul 07, 2009 A good backup can save from RAID hardware incompatibility problems. Software RAID allows you to mix different drive and sizes. You can not do something like this with hardware RAID cards. With software RAID you can swap the drives to a different server and read the data.
Hardware redundant array of inexpensive disks (RAID) and software RAID are two main ways for setting up RAID system. Many are confused about which is better. Actually, both have pros and cons. This article will guide you to make a good choice.
Nowadays, redundant array of inexpensive disks (RAID) has become a more and more popular data storage technology for both individuals and businesses. It can combine multiple physical disks into a single logical unit. Thereby, it can provide users with data redundancy, which can reduce the likelihood of data loss to some extent, such as damaged Outlook file. Also, it can improve devices’ performance.
Generally, there are two approaches to set up RAID. One is hardware. The other is software. When you intend to set up a RAID system, you will surely have to know a bit about the two setup means. In order to help you to make the most suitable selection between them, here we will reveal the advantages and disadvantages of hardware RAID and software RAID in detail.
Hardware RAID
Advantages:
- Hardware RAID is actually easy to set up. Most RAID controllers will come with a menu driven wizard, which can teach you to build your RAID array. At best, some are able to set up automatically and properly.
- In addition, it is also simple to replace the failed disk. Just plug it out and put in a new one.
Disadvantages:
- When your RAID controller fails, you have to find a compatible one to replace. The system can’t function without a suitable and effective RAID controller.
- Hardware RAID is far more expensive than software RAID. For instance, the high-end disk controllers can be very costly.
- In order to better monitor the health and performance of your RAID system, you have to rely on the specific software, which can be only provided by the vendor.
- Different RAID controller has their different permissions for users. That is to say, you cannot reshape, split or make other changes on the hardware RAID,
Software RAID
Advantages:
- Software RAID works relying on the operating system. That is to say, it is hardware independent without needs to be tied to hardware vendors.
- As the software for monitoring is standardized, you can use the same ways to monitor the health and performance of all your servers.
- Software RAID virtually belongs to operating system. Thus, it doesn’t demand additional costs. It is cheaper than software RAID.
- Plus, software RAID permits users to reconfigure your arrays without being restricted by the hardware RAID controller.
Disadvantages:
- Since software RAID is a part of operating system. Hence, its performance also depends on the CPU performance and the workload of your sever. Thus, it may have slower performance than a high end dedicated hardware RAID.
- Moreover, you need to incorporate your RAID build into operating system installation process.
- Replacing failed disk in the software RAID is a bit more complex. You have to firstly tell your system to stop using the disk and then replace the disk. So, it’s not as easy as replacing disk on hardware RAID.
Author Introduction:
Shirley Zhang is a data recovery expert in DataNumen, Inc., which is the world leader in data recovery technologies, including repair mdf and outlook repair software products. For more information visit www.datanumen.com
In this episode of Storage Board, we’ll take a look at RAID data storage and find out how it works.
Video transcript
Hi, I’m Mikey from Ontrack data recovery and welcome to Storage Board! In this episode we’re going to looking at RAID systems – what they are and how they work – but before we go any further, let’s define exactly what RAID stands for.
Defining RAID
RAID stands for the Redundant Array of Independent Disks and it is a method of data storage where you can distribute or spread data across multiple disks, all with the aim of increasing performance and reliability.
Execute a mac app from command line. It is no surprise then that organizations are the top users of RAID systems due to the increase in reliability; a concept that has been around for 30 years, and you don’t have to be a company to use it – you could be an individual, perhaps working on video editing or music production. It is used not only to increase performance and reliability over using a single drive, but also to increase volume sizes, which is why it is favored by organizations so much.
Hardware vs. software RAID
There are two main ways of setting up your RAID system; first, there is a hardware setup; it involves having your host computer (or it could be a server), and a RAID controller in between, which in turn, controls the RAID system itself. In a hardware setup, the RAID controller is responsible for everything to do with RAID; the reading and writing of data, plus where it is stored and what drives it gets written to. The host operating system has no knowledge of the fact that there are multiple drives within the RAID system and sees it all as one logical unit. In a software RAID array it is slightly different; the RAID controller is implemented with the operating system, which has a bit of a decrease in performance as the OS is then doing multiple things at once (as there’s no separate hardware RAID controller).
Before we go onto RAID levels and exactly how they work in practice, we’re going to take a look at some key terms to find out what these RAID systems are.
Key terms
First, there is ‘parity’. Parity is a very important concept within RAID. It is a way of distributing data across multiple drives to aid with load distribution and the recovery of data if something were to go wrong.
Next, we have ‘redundancy’, which in a computer science sense, is the duplication of critical components, so if one was to fail then the whole system does not go down with it. In the case of RAID systems, these components are the drives. We’ll go into more detail on that again shortly.
The other two really key concepts in RAID are ‘mirroring’ and ‘striping’. Mirroring is quite like what it says on the tin; it’s mirroring data from one drive to another, which replicates the exact same information so it can be recovered if something were to go wrong.
Then we have striping, which is when data is written sequentially across multiple disks and we’ll check out how that works in a moment within a ‘RAID 0’ setup.
Before we do that, it is worth mentioning that there are many different RAID levels out there. We’ve just picked four for the purpose of this video, but for example, if you are a company with custom applications or databases, you may want to create your own RAID level depending on what your exact needs are. Levels go from RAID 0 all the way up to RAID 61 and beyond, but there are also many other nested or custom levels. The ones we will look at here are the four most basic levels.
RAID 0
Hardware Vs Software Raid Mac
With a RAID 0 setup, there must be at least two drives using the concept of striping. As you can see, the data is striped across the two disks, which is fantastic in terms of read and write performance over a single disk. However, it is not great in terms of redundancy. This is because if one of those drives were to fail (let’s say drive 1 in this case), that data is not replicated anywhere else, which will cause some headaches as there’s nowhere to get it back from.
RAID 1
RAID 1 is our next level, which takes the concept of mirroring that we looked at earlier. Again, there are two drives in this setup, and it is mirroring the data from the first drive onto the second drive. This means that if drive 1 were to fail in this RAID configuration, you would be able to restore the data with no issues (as the same data is on drive 2). It adds redundancy and data security and is the lowest form of redundancy available within RAID.
RAID 5
https://skieyplum426.weebly.com/mac-clean-up-software-reviews.html. Now let’s move onto the more complex levels and take a look at RAID 5. This introduces the concept of parity – the distributing of data across multiple drives to aid recovery. You can see here that we have four drives in this setup (RAID 5 requires at least three drives) and you can see the parity is highlighted here in red. If one drive were to fail - let’s say drive 4 – the data can be rebuilt using the parity from the other drives (the parity in this RAID 5 takes up the space of one drive in total and it can therefore tolerate one drive failure). Free sports video analysis software for mac.
With RAID 5, you can go one step further and configure a fifth drive: a ‘hot spare’. This is an idle drive that sits within the system with no data written to it, but if one drive were to fail – let’s take drive 4 again – the hot spare (drive 5) would take the place of failed drive 4 and it would be written based on the parity across the other drives and no data gets lost. What you can then do is take out the failed drive and insert a new one into the array, which then becomes your new hot spare. This is another good way of adding redundancy to prevent data loss.
RAID 6
Lastly, we have RAID 6, which takes the concept of parity one step further to ‘dual parity’. You can see here in the RAID 6 array, we have five drives (RAID 6 requires at least four drives) and you can also see the dual parity span across them, taking up the space of two drives in total. This allows for two drives to fail within the array before there’s a problem with getting the data back. This adds some sense of reliability and data security so that if two drives were to go down, with the dual parity across the other drives, you can rebuild the data within that array.
Hardware Raid
It’s worth mentioning that redundancy and parity are not the same as having backups; always remember to keep separate backups of your RAID system.
That sums up RAID in a nutshell – I hope you found this video useful and if you would like more information please check out your local Ontrack office online. Thanks for watching!
Do you store data on a RAID system? What level do you use and why? Let us know by commenting below.