Redundant

Array of
Independent
Disks
RAID
 With the use of multiple disks, there is a wide
variety of ways in which the data can be
organized and in which redundancy can be
added to improve reliability.
 Fortunately, industry has agreed on a
standardized scheme for multiple-disk
database design, known as RAID (Redundant
Array of Independent Disks).
 The RAID scheme consists of seven levels, zero
through six.
 The term RAID was originally coined in a paper by
a group of researchers at the University of
California at Berkeley
 The paper outlined various RAID configurations
and applications and introduced the definitions of
the RAID levels that are still used.
 The RAID strategy employs multiple disk drives and
distributes data in such a way as to enable
simultaneous access to data from multiple drives,
 improving I/O performance and allowing easier
incremental increases in capacity.
RAID share three common
characteristics:
1. RAID is a set of physical disk drives viewed by
the operating system as a single logical
drive.
2. Data are distributed across the physical
drives of an array in a scheme known as
striping, described subsequently.
3. Redundant disk capacity is used to store
parity information, which guarantees data
recoverability in case of a disk failure.
 RAID 0
 No redundancy
 Few applications, such as some on
supercomputers in which performance and
capacity are primary concerns and low cost is
more important than improved reliability.
 Data striped across all disks
 Round Robin striping
 Increase speed
 Multiple data requests probably not on
same disk
 Disks seek in parallel
 A set of data is likely to be striped across
multiple disks
Strips
 The logical disk is divided into strips;
 these strips may be physical blocks,
sectors, or some other unit.
 The strips are mapped round robin to
consecutive physical disks in the RAID
array.
Data Mapping
The performance
 The
performance of any of the RAID levels
depends critically on
 the request patterns of the host system and
 on the layout of the data.
 These
issues can be most clearly
addressed in RAID 0,
For High data transfer rate
requirements
 First, a high transfer capacity must exist along the
entire path between host memory and the individual
disk drives.
 This includes internal controller buses, host system I/O
buses, I/O adapters, and host memory buses.
 The second requirement is that the application must
make I/O requests that drive the disk array efficiently.
 This requirement is met if the typical request is for large
amounts of logically contiguous data, compared to the
size of a strip.
 In this case, a single I/O request involves the parallel
transfer of data from multiple disks, increasing the
effective transfer rate compared to a single-disk transfer.
Problems to consider
 For an individual I/O request for a small
amount of data(strip size is relatively small),
the I/O time is dominated by the motion of
the disk heads (seek time) and the movement
of the disk (rotational latency).
 If the strip size is relatively large, so that a
single I/O request only involves a single disk
access, then multiple waiting I/O requests can
be handled in parallel, reducing the queuing
time for each request.
 Effective load balancing is achieved only if
there are typically multiple I/O requests
outstanding. The performance will also be
influenced by the strip size.
RAID Level 1
 RAID 1 redundancy is achieved.
 In these other RAID schemes, some form of parity
calculation is used to introduce redundancy,
 whereas in RAID 1, redundancy is achieved by the
simple expedient of duplicating all the data.
 Data striping is used, as in RAID 0. But in this case,
each logical strip is mapped to two separate
physical disks so that every disk in the array has a
mirror disk that contains the same data.
 RAID 1 can also be implemented without data
striping, though this is less common.
Positive aspects to the RAID 1
organization
 A read request can be serviced by either of
the two disks that contains the requested
data, whichever one involves the minimum
seek time plus rotational latency.
 A write request requires that both
corresponding strips be updated, but this can
be done in parallel.
 The write performance is dictated by the slower
of the two writes (i.e., the one that involves the
larger seek time plus rotational latency).
Positive aspects to the RAID 1
organization
 Recovery from a failure is simple. When a
drive fails, the data may still be accessed
from the second drive.
disadvantage
 The principal disadvantage of RAID 1 is the
cost;
 it requires twice the disk space of the logical
disk that it supports.
 Because of that, a RAID 1 configuration is
likely to be limited to drives that store system
software and data and other highly critical
files.
 In these cases, RAID 1 provides real-time copy
of all data so that in the event of a disk failure,
all of the critical data are still immediately
available.
 in a transaction-oriented environment,
RAID 1 can achieve high I/O request rates
if the bulk of the requests are reads.
 In this situation, the performance of RAID
1 can approach double of that of RAID 0.
RAID Level 2
 RAID levels 2 and 3 make use of a parallel access
technique.
 In a parallel access array, all member disks
participate in the execution of every I/O request.
 Typically, the bars of the individual drives are
synchronized so that each disk head is in the same
position on each disk at any given time.
 As in the other RAID schemes, data striping is used. In
the case of RAID 2 and 3, the strips are very small,
often as small as a single byte or word.
 With RAID 2, an error-correcting code is calculated
across corresponding bits on each data disk, and the
bits of the code are stored in the corresponding bit
positions on multiple parity disks.
 Typically, a Hamming code is used, which is able to
correct single-bit errors
Pro cons
 Although RAID 2 requires fewer disks than RAID 1, it
is still rather costly.
 The number of redundant disks is proportional to
the log of the number of data disks. On a single
read, all disks are simultaneously accessed.
 The requested data and the associated error-
correcting code are delivered to the array
controller.
 If there is a single-bit error, the controller can
recognize and correct the error instantly, so that
the read access time is not slowed.
 On a single write, all data disks and parity disks
must be accessed for the write operation.
 RAID 2 would only be an effective choice
in an environment in which many disk
errors occur.
 Given the high reliability of individual disks
and disk drives, RAID 2 is overkill and is not
implemented.
RAID Level 3
 RAID 3 is organized in a similar fashion to RAID
2.
 The difference is that RAID 3 requires only a
single redundant disk, no matter how large
the disk array.
 RAID 3 employs parallel access, with data
distributed in small strips.
 Instead of an error-correcting code, a simple
parity bit is computed for the set of individual
bits in the same position on all of the data
disks.
REDUNDANCY
 In the event of a drive failure, the parity
drive is accessed and data is
reconstructed from the remaining
devices.
 Once the failed drive is replaced, the
missing data can be restored on the new
drive and operation resumed.
 Data reconstruction is simple.
 Consider an array of five drives in which X0
through X3 contain data and X4 is the
parity disk. The parity for the ith bit is
calculated as follows:
 Thus, the contents of each strip of data on X1 can
be regenerated from the contents of the
corresponding strips on the remaining disks in the
array.
 This principle is true for RAID levels 3 through 6.
 In the event of a disk failure, all of the data are still
available in what is referred to as reduced mode.
 In this mode, for reads, the missing data are
regenerated on the fly using the exclusive-OR
calculation.
 When data are written to a reduced RAID 3 array,
consistency of the parity must be maintained for
later regeneration.
 Return to full operation requires that the failed disk
be replaced and the entire contents of the failed
disk be regenerated on the new disk.
PERFORMANCE
 Because data are striped in very small strips,
RAID 3 can achieve very high data transfer
rates.
 Any I/O request will involve the parallel
transfer of data from all of the data disks. For
large transfers, the performance
improvement is especially noticeable.
 On the other hand, only one I/O request can
be executed at a time. Thus, in a transaction-
oriented environment, performance suffers.
RAID Level 4
 RAID levels 4 through 6 make use of an
independent access technique.
 In an independent access array, each
member disk operates independently, so
that separate I/O requests can be
satisfied in parallel.
 Because of this, independent access
arrays are more suitable for applications
that require high I/O request rates
 As in the other RAID schemes, data
striping is used. In the case of RAID 4
through 6, the strips are relatively large.
 With RAID 4, a bit-by-bit parity strip is
calculated across corresponding strips on
each data disk, and the parity bits are
stored in the corresponding strip on the
parity disk.
 To calculate the new parity, the array
management software must read the old
user strip and the old parity strip.
 Then it can update these two strips with
the new data and the newly calculated
parity.
 Thus, each strip write involves two reads
and two writes.
Pro cons
 In the case of a larger size I/O write that
involves strips on all disk drives, parity is easily
computed by calculation using only the new
data bits.
 Thus, the parity drive can be updated in
parallel with the data drives and there are no
extra reads or writes.
 In any case, every write operation must
involve the parity disk, which therefore can
become a bottleneck.
RAID Level 5
 RAID 5 is organized in a similar fashion to
RAID 4.
 The difference is that RAID 5 distributes the
parity strips across all disks.
 A typical allocation is a round-robin
scheme.
 For an n-disk array, the parity strip is on a
different disk for the first n stripes, and the
pattern then repeats.
Pro cons
 Thedistribution of parity strips across all
drives avoids the potential I/O bottle-
neck found in RAID 4.
RAID Level 6
 Inthe RAID 6 scheme, two different parity
calculations are carried out and stored in
separate blocks on different disks.
 Thus, a RAID 6 array whose user data
require N disks consists of N + 2 disks.
P and Q are two different data check
algorithms.
 One of the two is the exclusive-OR
calculation used in RAID 4 and 5.
 But the other is an independent data
check algorithm.
 This makes it possible to regenerate data
even if two disks containing user data fail.
Pro cons
 The advantage of RAID 6 is that it provides
extremely high data availability.
 Three disks would have to fail to cause data to be
lost.
 On the other hand, RAID 6 incurs a substantial
write penalty, because each write affects two
parity blocks.
 RAID 6 controller can suffer more than a 30% drop
in overall write performance compared with a
RAID 5 implementation.
 RAID 5 and RAID 6 read performance is
comparable.