Backup Storage - RAID Level
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@aaronstuder would you care to provide some context? You have asked "what RAID do you use"? That's very open-ended. What size drives do you have? What is your need for storage capabilities? Are you replicating backups that are onsite to a colo? You have asked a very general question that, depending on YOUR needs, will affect the answer. RAID6 gives you better redundancy, but you take a hit to write performance. RAID10 has lower failure tolerance (1 drive to 2 with RAID6), but you have higher write speeds. So again, depends on your needs.
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@wirestyle22 said in Backup Storage - RAID Level:
@brianlittlejohn said in Backup Storage - RAID Level:
@aaronstuder I use RAID 10 for onsite, RAID 6 for my offsite backup.
6 to reduce cost for the secondary?
Yes, let me go with a smaller NAS device.
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Depends on many factors, but you typically use a large number of large capacity spinners (Winchester drives) for backup storage and RAID 6 is the most common approach. But it depends. If you are backing up a small amount, RAID 1 would make more sense up to 8-10TB today. And RAID 5 makes more sense if you are backing up to SSD. And RAID 10 might be important if you have a write bottleneck with your drives otherwise.
But by and large, RAID 6 is what you find until you get to something enormous running on ZFS, then RAID 7.
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RAID10 for production systems, and RAID 6 for onsite backup.
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Does RAID6 allow adding drives to a existing array?
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@aaronstuder said in Backup Storage - RAID Level:
@thanksajdotcom I intended for the question to be general.
Thanks,
Aaron
And I get that you like doing that, but it's too general. IT is used to meet a need, and there are different technologies or, in this case, RAID architectures (maybe the wrong term but you know what I mean) for different uses. General is fine, but if you're asking to solve a business concern, then we need more details, and I'm guessing you have a business reason to ask.
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@aaronstuder said in Backup Storage - RAID Level:
Does RAID6 allow adding drives to a existing array?
RAID itself does not allow that at all. That's not a RAID function. Parity RAID is more likely to allow expansion than mirrored RAID because it is so much easier to do as the idea of expanding the array is kind of already there in the resilver algorithm. But all expansion is proprietary and done outside of the RAID mechanisms.
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@scottalanmiller said in Backup Storage - RAID Level:
Depends on many factors, but you typically use a large number of large capacity spinners (Winchester drives) for backup storage and RAID 6 is the most common approach. But it depends. If you are backing up a small amount, RAID 1 would make more sense up to 8-10TB today. And RAID 5 makes more sense if you are backing up to SSD. And RAID 10 might be important if you have a write bottleneck with your drives otherwise.
But by and large, RAID 6 is what you find until you get to something enormous running on ZFS, then RAID 7.
Raid 1: meaning speed isn't a factor at that low of a capacity?
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@wirestyle22 said in Backup Storage - RAID Level:
@scottalanmiller said in Backup Storage - RAID Level:
Depends on many factors, but you typically use a large number of large capacity spinners (Winchester drives) for backup storage and RAID 6 is the most common approach. But it depends. If you are backing up a small amount, RAID 1 would make more sense up to 8-10TB today. And RAID 5 makes more sense if you are backing up to SSD. And RAID 10 might be important if you have a write bottleneck with your drives otherwise.
But by and large, RAID 6 is what you find until you get to something enormous running on ZFS, then RAID 7.
Raid 1: meaning speed isn't a factor at that low of a capacity?
It depends. If speed isn't a concern, and the need for redundancy is high, you can achieve high levels of storage with complete mirroring with a RAID1 with only two drives. RAID10 will give you all the benefits of RAID1, with striping built-in, but it also increases your costs by doubling the number of drives you need, at least.
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@wirestyle22 said in Backup Storage - RAID Level:
@scottalanmiller said in Backup Storage - RAID Level:
Depends on many factors, but you typically use a large number of large capacity spinners (Winchester drives) for backup storage and RAID 6 is the most common approach. But it depends. If you are backing up a small amount, RAID 1 would make more sense up to 8-10TB today. And RAID 5 makes more sense if you are backing up to SSD. And RAID 10 might be important if you have a write bottleneck with your drives otherwise.
But by and large, RAID 6 is what you find until you get to something enormous running on ZFS, then RAID 7.
Raid 1: meaning speed isn't a factor at that low of a capacity?
What do you mean? RAID 1 is the fastest thing that you can do with just two drives. And is faster for writes than RAID 5 with four drives, RAID 6 with six drives or RAID 7 with eight drives.
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@scottalanmiller said in Backup Storage - RAID Level:
@wirestyle22 said in Backup Storage - RAID Level:
@scottalanmiller said in Backup Storage - RAID Level:
Depends on many factors, but you typically use a large number of large capacity spinners (Winchester drives) for backup storage and RAID 6 is the most common approach. But it depends. If you are backing up a small amount, RAID 1 would make more sense up to 8-10TB today. And RAID 5 makes more sense if you are backing up to SSD. And RAID 10 might be important if you have a write bottleneck with your drives otherwise.
But by and large, RAID 6 is what you find until you get to something enormous running on ZFS, then RAID 7.
Raid 1: meaning speed isn't a factor at that low of a capacity?
What do you mean? RAID 1 is the fastest thing that you can do with just two drives. And is faster for writes than RAID 5 with four drives, RAID 6 with six drives or RAID 7 with eight drives.
If budget is a concern, RAID1 is great, because you only need 2 drives.
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@aaronstuder , here's a pretty good article explaining what RAID is. This should help: https://www.prepressure.com/library/technology/raid
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@scottalanmiller said in Backup Storage - RAID Level:
@wirestyle22 said in Backup Storage - RAID Level:
@scottalanmiller said in Backup Storage - RAID Level:
Depends on many factors, but you typically use a large number of large capacity spinners (Winchester drives) for backup storage and RAID 6 is the most common approach. But it depends. If you are backing up a small amount, RAID 1 would make more sense up to 8-10TB today. And RAID 5 makes more sense if you are backing up to SSD. And RAID 10 might be important if you have a write bottleneck with your drives otherwise.
But by and large, RAID 6 is what you find until you get to something enormous running on ZFS, then RAID 7.
Raid 1: meaning speed isn't a factor at that low of a capacity?
What do you mean? RAID 1 is the fastest thing that you can do with just two drives. And is faster for writes than RAID 5 with four drives, RAID 6 with six drives or RAID 7 with eight drives.
It's true that Raid 1 is the fastest thing you can do with two drives and have redundancy. I always thought Raid 10 was the best option, but that comes with a pretty hefty cost. I can see what you are saying in regards to cost vs. capacity. I'd trade the performance for more redundancy in this kind of a situation.
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@thanksajdotcom I know how RAID works, I was simply trying to see what others are using for backup data.
In production, RAID10, no question. Unless it's SSD, then RAID5
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@wirestyle22 said in Backup Storage - RAID Level:
It's true that Raid 1 is the fastest thing you can do with two drives and have redundancy. I always thought Raid 10 was the best option, but that comes with a pretty hefty cost. I can see what you are saying in regards to cost vs. capacity.
RAID 1 is just the smallest RAID 10 if you think of it that way. RAID 10 where the RAID 0 stripe is just one drive, that's RAID 1. So while that's weird, it's the only useful way to really think of it. RAID 1 as a subset of RAID 10 because that's how it behaves (if you make a curve of any RAID 10 function - capacity, performance, reliability, cost, etc.) RAID 1 fits neatly in as the smallest entry. And since lots of controllers allow for "single drive RAID 0 implementations" it is logical that we would see RAID 1 as a small RAID 10 as well.
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@wirestyle22 said in Backup Storage - RAID Level:
I'd trade the performance for more redundancy in this kind of a situation.
This is where you differ from the norm. The vast majority of businesses will not invest additionally in extreme levels of data protection in their backup systems. Remember, this is already a backup, if the system fails you can recreate it. This is so extreme that many people argue for RAID 0 and RAID 5 on backup systems. It is already a full extra level of complete redundancy itself, so making it even more redundant is redundancy of redundancy. So normally it is only the speed of RAID 10 that comes into play, not the additional safety. If a backup system is lost because of RAID 6 or suffers large scale performance degradation it rarely matters at all. The cost of RAID 10 is extremely rarely a viable business case for backup systems.
That said here are the hard rules....
- Two drives, RAID 1
- Three drives, buy another drive
- Four drives, RAID 10
- Five drives, RAID 6
- Six or more drives.... weigh your priorities to determine what makes sense for your business case.
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