Monday, April 11, 2011

RAID Array Terms and Definitions

Despite the favor of RAID arrays when it comes to given conditions storage and backup, many people are after that a bit confused with some of the articles of agreement that are used in the ventilation of these configurations. In this bind, we'll look at some of the greatest in number common RAID related terms and their definitions.

 

RAID:

RAID is some acronym for Redundant Array of Independent Disks. Sometimes you'll attend to it as Redundant Array of Inexpensive Disks. RAID technology combines two or more disk drives for improved premises storage, retrieval, back-up and offence tolerance. It lets you store the identical data in more than one stead so that it can be recovered equitable if one or more of the first copy disk drives fails.

 

Array:

An fine clothes is the group of hard circular plate drives used in a RAID configuration.

 

Hard disk drive:

Abbreviated as HDD and in like manner referred to as a drive, unsusceptible drive, disk or hard disk, a ungraceful disk drive is the component of your computer to what data is stored. The data is stored without interrupti~ a disk or platter and accessed through the read/write heads.

 

CDP:

CDP stands in spite of Continuous Data Protection and is designed to get rid of any chance for data loss due to hard drive failure.  

 

Controller:

The controller is an electronic device that organizes the form of a RAID array. The controller connects to each individual disk in the system and allows them to communicate with the host system as on the supposition that they were a single disk guide .

 

Redundancy:

Redundancy refers to the performance that data stored in a RAID system is stored in more than single place at a time. This protects you in expectation of data loss to some extent since data that is lost due to the failure of unit hard drive can usually be recovered from its lay on another drive in the system.

 

Stripe:

A stripe is a paltry block of data that has been recorded in a RAID dress. Striping is the process of dividing a mould of data into small segments and distributing them athwart multiple drives within a RAID theory.

 

Mirroring:

Mirroring refers to storing not different copies of a string of given conditions on two separate hard drives. There are couple primary advantages of mirroring: you be possible to recover the data from one airing if the other one fails, and you conduct more than one read request at a time and for that access data more quickly than you could by a single drive.

 

Parity:

Parity involves performing a dialectical operation on data as it is stored and that time storing the result on a unconnected drives or on all of the drives in an array. This allows the original data to be reconstructed if any of the drives in a RAID figure fail.

 

Striping with Parity:

Striping with parity adds fault tolerance to your theory but reduces your storage capacity to more degree. Blocks of parity information are streaked, or stored in smaller groups in c~tinuance each disk in the array. 

 

RAID levels:

Levels are many configurations within the concept of a RAID theory. There are numerous RAID levels, some of which are commonly used, others are sparse or obsolete.

 

Fault Tolerance:

Fault endurance is the degree to which a RAID order can withstand disk drive failure not beyond the array while still allowing you to means of approach your data.

 

Efficiency:

The amount of storage magnitude use for stored information compared to the total storage capacity needed for the RAID flush of your system. It's expressed during the time that the number of drives needed with respect to the actual storage capacity compared to the account of drives needed to provide redundancy.

 

Host regularity:

The host system is the computer body that is connected to the RAID collocation.

 

Hot Spare:

A hot spare is a diligently drive connected to the array that is not essential ~ used, but is available to have existence brought on line if one of the other drives in the collocation fails.

 

Protection gap:

The protection hiatus is the length of time between data backups.

 

Super RAID:

A RAID design that gives you distinct layers of redundancy, some of which could be single layer RAID configurations in their acknowledge right. A super RAID provides a countless deal of protection against data damage.

 

So there you have it, a glossary of terms so that the nearest time someone starts to discuss RAID arrays, you'll accept a better idea of what the articles of agreement mean and how they affect your computer arrangement.

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