It seems I’m under the influence …

So the wife was right after all these years (I can say that here because I can definitely, exactly and almost confidently say that (a) she doesn’t read this and (b) doesn’t listen to a word I say about “blogs” and other computer related stuff).

http://searchstorage.techtarget.com.au/articles/35314-EMC-Cisco-accused-of-FUDfest-Apple-hammered-NetApp-accused-of-PR-BS-as-IBM-and-HDS-fight
(you’ll have to read down the page to get my point)

There is nothing that makes you think on your feet faster than answering questions from a journo. So what’s the future of RAID? Is it RAID 4 as per my colleague from NetApps? Don’t think so. NetApps are one of the few people doing it and if you ask joe public he probably hasn’t even heard of it.

6 and 10 are my bet. RAID 6 is the go these days because of faster processing power on RAID cards … the performance hit we once took for running so much parity has pretty much gone and yes, you can survive two disk failures at once.

RAID 10 is also a favourite amongst the paranoid of us out there because it “sounds” very safe, provides great performance and doesn’t cost the earth these days.

There is, however, a difference between 6 and 10 that needs to be understood (and often isn’t in my experience). Both 6 and 10 can survive two simultaneous drive failures … but with 10 you have to be very, very lucky as to which drives fail to survive the two drive calamity. 6 doesn’t care … two drives go and you’re still good. With 10 if two drives from the one raid leg go, you’re gone.

So don’t think about RAID 10 as being able to survive two drive failures … just think about it as a very fast way to use up a lot of disk space and money at the same time.

Ciao
Neil