[TriLUG] Re: New system configuration thoughts

[Lance A. Brown]

Kevin Jones wrote:
> It seems like I read somewhere that RAID 5 begins to really take a
> beating when you get in to higher numbers of drives due to a 2TB
> limitation in the algorithm. All of the high-end arrays I've looked
> at use a different algorithm for providing multiple drive failure
> tolerance and the speed actually improves (supposedly) with higher
> numbers of drives.

Higher numbers of drives means smaller drives means it takes less time
to rebuild a failed drive onto a hot spare, thus shortening the
vulnerability window.

I don't think there is a 2TB limit int he RAID-5 algorithm, per se.
More likely has to do with filesystem sizes and 32 vs. 64 bit operating
systems.

More drives can also have a performance impact depending on your
interconnect technology.

--[Lance]

-- 
 Celebrate The Circle   http://www.celebratethecircle.org/
 Carolina Spirit Quest  http://www.carolinaspiritquest.org/
 My LiveJournal  http://www.livejournal.com/users/labrown/
 GPG Fingerprint: 409B A409 A38D 92BF 15D9 6EEE 9A82 F2AC 69AC 07B9
 CACert.org Assurer