Is Hardware or Software RAID Best for Your Application?

Now that you understand the different RAID implementations, here are some typical server deployment scenarios where you can optimize the RAID subsystem to meet your overall server price performance goals.

 

Operating System Software RAID

 

Pure software RAID solutions are best for entry-level RAID 0 or 1 where performance or data availability is key. However, software RAID cannot be used on the boot drive as the operating system RAID functionality is not available until after the OS boots.

 

Target Applications

 

Entry-level servers with high performance requirements Entry-level servers with data availability requirements

 

Hardware-Assisted Software RAID

 

Hardware-assisted software RAID works well as a cost-sensitive solution, similar to operating system software RAID, but with bootability requirements.

 

Target Applications

Workstations without large data storage requirements Entry-level servers without boot protection requirements

 

Hardware RAID

 

Hardware RAID solutions target the most feature-rich and highest performance applications. These solutions may be implemented as RAID on the Motherboard (ROMB) or with plug-in cards to scale performance and availability (controller redundancy).

 

Target Applications

 

Entry-level servers without large storage requirements Computer engines connected to network storage

 

More Hardware RAID

In general, hardware RAID offers more advantages over software-based solutions for more complex RAID algorithms. Measurements indicate that, for instance, software RAID-6 implementations impose a heavy load on system compute resources, especially in degraded mode. This makes hardware RAID attractive for such configurations.

 

Target Applications

High performance workstations with large data storage requirements Entry level to enterprise servers requiring performance and scalability from the storage subsystem.

 

                                                                                                                                                  Refer from Microsemi

 

 

2018-09-20