Re: Informix 7.x and RAID 5

pgreene@jax.jaxnet.com (pgreene) wrote: >We are setting up a data warehouse using Infomix 7.1 on a RS 6000 J30. We have >received conflicting information about using RAID5 storage systems in this environment. >Our database will start at around 30 GB growing to several hundred GB in the future. >Some information that we have says absolutely do not use any RAID system with Informix >7.x and other information says that it is not a problem. If you have experience with this or >knowledge about this I would greatly appreciate your help. Thanks in advance. We are in the process of acquiring an Informix based system to handle financials. Informix and HP have both indicated that RAID 5 will make it impossible to tune your database for maximum speed (this assumes that all 30G will be in a single array). They have both suggested RAID 1 (aka mirroring) if we want data protection. This still allows you to split your database up on separate drives (for increased parallelism). Theoretically, several small RAID 5 arrays would allow this to be done as well. For example, 3 10G arrays would allow you to split the database 3 ways. However, the limit on number of RAID controllers connected to the system could be a gotcha here.