I know this has been kicked around a lot in the group, but I am once again
at the crossroads of building a new server, and have reservations about
which RAID level is best. I have had good success with RAID-5, and know the
fault tolerance benefits it affords, but fellows in here have pointed out
RAID-5 is slow on writes and overall performance.

Would I gain significant performance increase by using another raid level
instead of 5, and if so which one, 0+1 (10)?

The server usage would be that of a database engines for 50+ users. Writes
wouldn't be all that significant, mostly reporting (reads) and record
retrieval, with some updating.

What's your favorite? On how many disks?

Bob Meyers wrote:

>I know this has been kicked around a lot in the group, but I am once again
>at the crossroads of building a new server, and have reservations about
>which RAID level is best. I have had good success with RAID-5, and know the
>fault tolerance benefits it affords, but fellows in here have pointed out
>RAID-5 is slow on writes and overall performance.
>
>Would I gain significant performance increase by using another raid level
>instead of 5, and if so which one, 0+1 (10)?
>
>The server usage would be that of a database engines for 50+ users. Writes
>wouldn't be all that significant, mostly reporting (reads) and record
>retrieval, with some updating.
>
>What's your favorite? On how many disks?
>
>
>
>
You might want to check out baarf.org

--
Scott Burns
Mirrabooka Systems

Tel +61 7 3857 7899
Fax +61 7 3857 1368

> Would I gain significant performance increase by using another raid level
> instead of 5, and if so which one, 0+1 (10)?

Only if the writes are >= reads.

> Writes
> wouldn't be all that significant, mostly reporting (reads) and record
> retrieval, with some updating.

Then RAID5 would do. Does this DB/App already run on another server?
Have you got write & read stats for it. What does the DB/App Vendor
say?

John

"Bob Meyers" <oregonbob2000@yahoo.com> wrote in message news:<c0bkvr$15h52s$1@ID-105888.news.uni-berlin.de>...
> I know this has been kicked around a lot in the group, but I am once again
> at the crossroads of building a new server, and have reservations about
> which RAID level is best. I have had good success with RAID-5, and know the
> fault tolerance benefits it affords, but fellows in here have pointed out
> RAID-5 is slow on writes and overall performance.
>
> Would I gain significant performance increase by using another raid level
> instead of 5, and if so which one, 0+1 (10)?
>
> The server usage would be that of a database engines for 50+ users. Writes
> wouldn't be all that significant, mostly reporting (reads) and record
> retrieval, with some updating.
>
> What's your favorite? On how many disks?

Personally I wish I could use raid 10, but we have a lot of data and
so we use raid 5 because its cheaper. Like you, read performance is
also more important for us than write performance and for that I think
raid 5 is ok.

Not too start a religous war, but I also prefer hardware raid too
software raid. I feel that we've gotten better performance overall.

I think it really comes down to a question of need and which solution
you think you can afford the best.


Cheers,

Shawn