Decreasing I/O latency in RAID array

BROWSE BY TAG Storage Networking: SAN/NAS,   SAN management,   SAN (storage area network),   Disk Storage,   RAID,   Primary Storage or Storage Hardware,   Storage Area Network Upgrades,   Related information,   High-end storage arrays,   RAID,   Implementing RAID,   Boosting RAID performance,   VIEW ALL TAGS

Digg This!     StumbleUpon     Del.icio.us

RELATED CONTENT Storage Networking: SAN/NAS Upgrading operating systems for two fabrics Data centers and synchronous replication Network File Sharing vs. Common Internet File System Use of RAID with multiple drives How to add more channels to a network Achieving secure data storage for shared read/write I/O operation SAN server accommodation Offsite vs. onsite storage SATA on a Dell Dimension 4400 FCID on two separate fabrics SAN management Unilever maintains 5 PB Fibre Channel SAN storage performance with Virtual Instruments' NetWisdom Storage Decisions Chicago 2009 Session Downloads Storage Decisions Session Downloads: Managing Storage Networks Track (Chicago 2009) Storage-area networks to become increasingly object based Data storage management in virtual server environments 10 Gb Ethernet bodes well for iSCSI Mellanox builds bridge to consolidation Best storage Products of the Year 2008 Wide stripe before you dive into SSD How your SAN will evolve SAN management Research Implementing RAID How to choose the correct RAID level External SATA RAID array vs. system replacement Is RAID in general an obsolete technology today? Best Practices: Balance workloads with RAID types RAID technology adds reliability and overcomes concerns, page 2 How many disk drives do you need for RAID 10? Software vs. hardware RAID Setting up RAID RAID shopping How to choose the right RAID level for your disk array

RELATED GLOSSARY TERMS Terms from Whatis.com − the technology online dictionary Fast Guide to Storage Technologies  (WhatIs.com) fat provisioning  (SearchStorage.com) oversubscription  (SearchStorage.com) RAID  (SearchStorage.com) storage area management  (SearchStorage.com) storage area network  (SearchStorage.com) thin provisioning  (SearchStorage.com) unified storage  (SearchStorage.com) virtual provisioning  (SearchStorage.com) zoned-bit recording  (SearchStorage.com)

RELATED RESOURCES 2020software.com, trial software downloads for accounting software, ERP software, CRM software and business software systems Search Bitpipe.com for the latest white papers and business webcasts Whatis.com, the online computer dictionary

There are a lot of unknowns so it would be inappropriate to make a specific recommendation without more details of your environment. For example, I'm not clear if your clients are accessing 1.5 MByte-sized files, or if each user is doing 1.5Mbit/second I/O to the TGA files. Likewise, it's not clear if multiple users are accessing the same files or if they are working on unique files at any given time. How many SATA disk drives do you have configured in the RAID-5 setup, and do you have 2 TB usable storage or 2 TB total storage. For example, if you have eight 250 GB SATA disk drives (2 TB raw or total storage) that could work out to only 1.75 TB of RAID-5 storage (e.g. 7+1) or less if a hot spare disk drive were configured.

So, if you are doing lots of large writes and updates, you may want to look at not using RAID-5 given its parity overhead impact on performance. You might consider RAID-0+1 as well as look at migrating to higher performance SAS disk drives. While a NAS server may be a good fit, if you are using your Linux server for file serving that would accomplish the same purpose. However, take a look to see if you have adequate network bandwidth to your clients. iSCSI could be a good fit. However, if your users are accessing a shared volume, than NAS could be a good fit. On the other hand, iSCSI storage with SAS disk drives attached to your Linux server would be a good solution as well.

Do you know:

How to minimize I/O latency?

How to implement SAS storage?