LaCie Professional Server
RAID - Three Disks
Technical Brief: RAID
page 46
5big Storage Server Suggested RAID Configurations
(Three Disks)
Volume Disks and RAID
Level
Usage
Notes
System
✦
2 Disks
✦
Mirror
✦
Windows Storage Server
must run from its own
volume.
✦
Storing data on the sys-
tem volume will impact
server performance.
✦
A Mirror requires two drives, making it ideal for the Windows Storage
Server operating system.
✦
A Mirror offers redundancy, duplicating each file on the two disks that
make up the volume. If one disk should fail, the system can continue
to operate since the exact same system files are stored on its mirrored
drive.
✦
Windows Storage Server may run from a mirrored volume.
Swap
✦
1 Disk
✦
Simple Volume
(No RAID)
✦
A swap, or paging file
improves server perfor-
mance by extending the
device’s physical memo-
ry. The swap file may be
created on a non-system
volume, acting as virtual
memory. See
5.4.2. Cre-
ate the Swap File
.
✦
Due to its size, the Swap
volume may be used
for applications that are
installed on the 5big
Storage Server.
✦
The Swap volume may
also be used to create
Shares and store data.
✦
Since a Swap file may be recreated, you can take advantage of a
partition that is not protected.
Data
✦
3 Disks
✦
RAID 5
✦
The Data volume should
be used to create Shares
and store data.
✦
RAID 5 requires three or more disks.
✦
RAID 5 offers improved storage capacity. While mirroring has an
overhead of 50% storage capacity due to file duplication, RAID 5 par-
ity on the Data volume has approximately 20% overhead. This means
that close to 80% of the total capacity is available for storing data.
✦
RAID 5 includes many features that improve performance. For ex-
ample, RAID 5 uses block level parity to secure files. Block level parity
takes far less time to write data across the disks in the volume than
mirroring files across two drives.
✦
RAID 5 volumes may not host the Windows Storage Server operating
system.
