Comparing RAID Level And Concatenation Performance
RAID Level | Data Availability | Read Performance | Write Performance | Rebuild Performance | Minimum Disks Required | Suggested Uses |
Concatenation | No gain | No gain | No gain | N/A | 1 or 2 depending on the controller | More cost efficient than redundant RAID levels. Use for noncritical data. |
RAID 0 | None | Very Good | Very Good | N/A | N | Noncritical data. |
RAID 1 | Excellent | Very Good | Good | Good | 2N (N = 1) | Small databases, database logs, and critical information. |
RAID 5 | Good | Sequential reads: good. Transactional reads: Very good | Fair, unless using writeback cache | Fair | N + 1 (N = at least two disks) | Databases and other read intensive transactional uses. |
RAID 10 | Excellent | Very Good | Fair | Good | 2N x X | Data intensive environments (large records). |
RAID 50 | Good | Very Good | Fair | Fair | N + 2 (N = at least 4) | Medium sized transactional or data intensive uses. |
RAID 6 | Excellent | Sequential reads: good. Transactional reads: Very good | Fair, unless using writeback cache | Poor | N + 2 (N = at least two disks) | Critical information. Databases and other read intensive transactional uses. |
RAID 60 | Excellent | Very Good | Fair | Poor | X x (N + 2) (N = at least 2) | Critical information. Medium sized transactional or data intensive uses. |
N = Number of physical disks X = Number of RAID sets |