Re: RAID 1/0 vs. RAID 5

On Sat, 25 Jul 1998 16:47:56 -0700, Larry Benoit <lbenoit@javanet.com> wrote: >I am about to configure a new Compaq Proliant 3000 with the Compaq 2SL >SCSI RAID controller, 128 MB memory, four 4.1 GB UW (10K spindles) >drives, SCO Openserver 5.0.4 and Informix Online 5.10 with I-Star. We >have about 16 users running Win95 with NewEra 2.2. > >I plan to configure the four hard drives into two logical stripped >drives and mirror the logical drives -- RAID 1/0. This is the >configuration for our current Compaq ProSignia 500/SCO Openserver 3.0 >running Informix Online 5.03 and thankfully has been 100% reliable for 3 >plus years. > >Disk capacity is not an issue -- our database will not exceed 1GB -- >performance and reliability are my primary concern. I will be using raw >devices and 64MB of shared memory will be allocated to the database >engine. > >I am inclined to stick with RAID 1/0, but would appreciate any comments >regarding performance and reliability of RAID 1/0 versus RAID 5, >especially for complex queries. Check for Art Kagel's posts on this. He have explained many times why you should not use RAID 5 and do as you have done using RAID 1/0 instead. RAID 5 is slow on writes and has some failure modes that may actually render your database useless. Nils Myklebust NM Data AS Norway E-mail: Nils.Myklebust@nmdata.com FAQ at: http://www.iiug.org/techinfo/faq/faq_top.html (Now with ODBC info under "Third party products".)