RAID / Redundant Array of Inexpensive Disks for Not Yet Techies

"Computer Careers: Using This Technology to Speed Up Linux Networks"

by Richard Stooker, President Info Ring Press and author of Secrets of Changing to a Computer Career

RAID / Redundant Array of Inexpensive Disks is a technology to speed the performance and reliability of Linux networks. The "I" can stand for "Inexpensive" or "Independent." RAID / Redundant Array of Inexpensive Disks started as a paper in 1988 by David A Patterson, Garth A Gibson and Randy H Katz in Berkeley.

It offers improved I/O / Input/Output performance and failsafe data storage. It provides for:

File sharing
Mail exchange
Web server

The basic structure of RAID / Redundant Array of Inexpensive Disks is that it consists of many disks made to appear to the computer as a single disk

Since the many disks can perform a lot more than one disk by itself, this offers greatly improved performance and speed. The concept was invented because in 1988 input/output speed was not advancing with CPU speed.

There are two kinds:

1. Software -- uses the computer's CPU to create "virtual" multi disks

2. Hardware -- uses specialized processors on disk controllers to manage the disks

Using it, I/O can overlap and be balanced. Plus, since data is stored on multiple disks, it is safer, so that's why this technology is more reliable. Having multiple disks increases the mean time between failure (MTBF), so it increases fault tolerance.

The 4 Levels are:

RAID-0 -- Striping
RAID-1 -- Mirroring
RAID-4 -- Dedicated Parity
RAID-5 -- Distributed Parity

These are the basics of RAID / Redundant Array of Inexpensive Disks.

Next: Debian Linux

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