An associate is building a new database server that is configured with hard drives in a RAID 0 array. You know that RAID stands for “Redundant Array of Inexpensive Disks,” but your associate tells you that his RAID 0 array will not have any redundancy. Is your associate accurately describing RAID 0?
A) RAID 0 is used to describe a system that does not use multiple hard drives to enhance performance or provide additional availability.
B) RAID 0 does not provide drive redundancy, but it does split files across hard drives to improve performance.
C) RAID 0 does provide redundancy, and every file is duplicated and stored on separate physical hard drives.
D) RAID 0 does provide redundancy. Files are split across physical drives and a separate parity block is calculated and stored. In the case of a drive failure, the parity information is used to recreate the missing file data.
Answer: B) RAID 0 does not provide drive redundancy, but it does split files across hard drives to improve performance.
Although RAID 0 doesn’t provide any availability benefits in the event of a hard drive error, it does improve performance by splitting information across multiple drives. Instead of going to a single drive and reading an entire file at once, multiple drives can work independently to speed operation. Some high-end servers will include hundreds of hard drives working together to form very large RAID arrays.
The incorrect answers
A) RAID 0 is used to describe a system that does not use multiple hard drives to enhance performance or provide additional availability.
Don’t be thrown by the use of the numeral 0 to designate this level of RAID. Although the numbering system that we use for RAID isn’t standardized, the industry universally uses RAID 0 to describe “striping” across physical hard drives to improve disk performance.
C) RAID 0 does provide redundancy, and every file is duplicated and stored on separate physical hard drives.
This description is actually RAID 1, also known as drive mirroring. RAID 1 creates an exact duplicate, but this also means that you’ll need twice as much hard drive space to support the redundant information.
D) RAID 0 does provide redundancy. Files are split across physical drives and a separate parity block is calculated and stored. In the case of a drive failure, the parity information is used to recreate the missing file data.
This answer describes RAID 5. RAID 5 requires more overhead to calculate the parity information, but it uses less disk space than RAID 1 while still maintaining availability should a hard drive fail.
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Want to know more? Watch “Configuring RAID.”RAID technology provides organizations around the world with real-time redundancy of important data. In this video, we’ll show you how RAID works and we’ll discuss the different configuration options for RAID. We’ll also provide some hands-on detail with a live demonstration of the RAID configuration process in Microsoft Windows. |