Friday, 30 August 2013

RAID INTERVIEW QUESTIONS




RAID 0 – Striping (Striped Disk Array without Fault tolerance)

It is the Stripped Disk Array with no fault tolerance and it requires at least 2 drives
To be implemented. Due to no redundancy feature, RAID 0 is considered to be the
Lowest ranked RAID level. Striped data mapping technique is implemented for
High performance at low cost. The I/O performance is also improved as it is loaded across many channels.

Recommended Applications

Video production and editing
Image editing
Pre-press applications
Any application requiring high bandwidth

RAID 1 – Mirroring (Mirroring & Duplexing)

It is the Mirroring it is provide high performance. RAID 1 controller is able to perform 2 separate parallel reads or writes per mirrored pair. It also requires at least 2 drives to implement a non-redundant disk array. High level of availability, access and reliability can be achieved by entry-level RAID 1 array. With full redundancy feature available, need of readability is almost negligible. Controller configurations and Storage subsystem design is the easiest and simplest amongst all RAID levels.

Disadvantages

Typically the RAID function is done by system software, loading the CPU/Server and possible degrading throughput at high activity levels. Hardware implementation is strongly recommended
May not support hot swap of failed disk when implemented “software”

Recommended Applications
Accounting
Payroll
Financial
Any application requiring very high availability

RAID 2 (ECC error correcting code) (Hamming Code ECC)

It is the combination of Inherently Parallel Mapping and Protection RAID array.
It's also known as ECC RAID because each data word bit is written to data disk
Which is verified for correct data or correct disk error when the RAID disk is read.
Due to special disk features required, RAID 2 is not very popular since ECC is embedded in almost all modern disk drives.
Disadvantages
Very high ratio of ECC disks to data disks with smaller word sizes – inefficient
Entry level cost very high – requires very high transfer rate requirement to justify
Transaction rate is equal to that of a single disk at best (with spindle synchronization)
No commercial implementations exist / not commercially visible.

RAID LEVEL 3 (Parallel Transfer with Parity)

At least 3 drives we need to implementation in this raid level. Can be used single user environments which access long sequential records to Speed up data transfer. However raid-3 does not allow multiple I/O operation
We can use this raid level for image editing, pre press applications.
Disadvantages 
Transaction rate equal to that of a single disk drive at best (if spindles are synchronized)
Controller design is fairly complex
Very difficult and resource intensive to do as a "software" RAID
Recommended Applications
Video Production and live streaming
Image Editing
Video Editing
Prepress Applications
Any application requiring high throughput

RAID Level 4:  Independent Data Disk with Shared Parity Disk

Raid 4 does not support multiple simultaneous write operations.

RAID 4 requires a minimum of 3 drives to be implemented. It is composed of independent disks with shared parity to protect the data. Data transaction rate for
Read is exceptionally high and highly aggregated. Similarly, the low ratio of parity
Disks to data disks indicates high efficiency.
Disadvantages
Quite complex controller design
Worst Write transaction rate and Write aggregate transfer rate
Difficult and inefficient data rebuild in the event of disk failure
Block Read transfer rate equal to that of a single disk

RAID Level 5: Independent Data Disk with distributed Parity Blocks

RAIDS 5 is Independent Distributed parity block of data disks with a minimum
Requirement of at least 3 drives to be implemented and N-1 array capacity. It helps in reducing the write inherence found in RAID 4. RAID 5 array offers highest data transaction Read rate, medium data transaction Write rate and good cumulative transfer rate.
Characteristics and Advantages 
Highest Read data transaction rate
Medium Write data transaction rate
Low ratio of ECC (Parity) disks to data disks means high efficiency
Good aggregate transfer rate
Disadvantages
Disk failure has a medium impact on throughput
Most complex controller design
Difficult to rebuild in the event of a disk failure (as compared to RAID level 1)
Individual block data transfer rate same as single disk
Recommended Applications
File and Application servers
Database servers
Web, E-mail, and News servers
Intranet servers
Most versatile RAID level

RAID Level 6:

RAIDS 6 are Independent Data Disk array with Independent Distributed parity. It is known to be an extension of RAID level 5 with extra fault tolerance and distributed parity scheme added. RAID 6 is the best available RAID array for mission critical
Applications and data storage needs, though the controller design is very complex
And overheads are extremely high.
Disadvantages
More complex controller design
Controller overhead to compute parity addresses is extremely high
Write performance can be brought on par with RAID Level 5 by using a custom
ASIC for computing Reed-Solomon parity
Requires N+2 drives to implement because of dual parity scheme
Recommended Applications
File and Application servers
Database servers
Web and E-mail servers
Intranet servers
Excellent fault-tolerance with the lowest overhead  
RAID Level 10:
RAID 10 is classified as the futuristic RAID controller with extremely high Reliability and performance embedded in a single RAID controller. The minimum
Requirement to form a RAID level 10 controller is 4 data disks. The implementation
Of RAID 10 is based on a striped array of RAID 1 array segments, with almost the
Same fault tolerance level as RAID 1. RAID 10 controllers and arrays are suitable
For uncompromising availability and extremely high throughput required systems
And environment. With all the significant RAID levels discussed here briefly, another important point to add is that whichever level of RAID is used regular and consistent data backup maintenance using tape storage is must as the regular tape storage is best media to recover from lost data scene.

Disadvantages

Very expensive / high overhead
All drives must move in parallel to proper track lowering sustained performance
Very limited scalability at a very high inherent cost
Recommended Applications
Database server requiring high performance and fault tolerance   

RAID Level 0+1:
It is the RAID array providing high data transference performance with at least 4 disks needed to implement the RAID 0+1 level. It's a unique combination of stripping
and mirroring with all the best features of RAID 0 and RAID 1 included such as fast
data access and fault tolerance at single drive level. The multiple stripe segments
have added high I/O rates to the RAID performance and it is the best solution for maximum reliability.
Disadvantages
RAID 0+1 is NOT to be confused with RAID 10. A single drive failure will cause the whole array to become, in essence, a RAID Level 0 array
Very expensive / high overhead
All drives must move in parallel to proper track lowering sustained performance
Very limited scalability at a very high inherent cost
Recommended Applications
Imaging applications
General Fileserver

RAID LEVEL 50

RAID Level 50 requires a minimum of 6 drives to implement

Characteristics and Advantages

RAID 50 should have been called "RAID 03" because it was implemented as a striped
(RAID level 0) array whose segments were RAID 3 arrays (during mid-90s)
Most current RAID 50 implementation is illustrated above
RAID 50 is more fault tolerant than RAID 5 but has twice the parity overhead
High data transfer rates are achieved thanks to its RAID 5 array segments
High I/O rates for small requests are achieved thanks to its RAID 0 striping
Maybe a good solution for sites that would have otherwise gone with RAID 5 but need some additional performance boost
Disadvantages
Very expensive to implement
All disk spindles must be synchronized, which limits the choice of drives
Failure of two drives in one of the RAID 5 segments renders the whole array unusable.

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