RAID 50 Logical Drive
A RAID 50 logical drive is built from six to forty-eight disk drives configured as two or more RAID 5 arrays,
and stripes stored data and parity data across all disk drives in both RAID 5 logical drives. (For more
information, see
RAID 5 Logical Drives
on page 119.)
The parity data provides data protection, and striping improves performance. RAID 50 logical drives
also provide high data transfer speeds.
Drive segment size is limited to the size of the smallest disk drive in the logical drive. For example, three
250 GB disk drives and three 400 GB disk drives comprise two equal-sized RAID 5 logical drives with 500
GB of stored data and 250 GB of parity data. The RAID 50 logical drive can therefore contain 1000 GB
(2 x 500 GB) of stored data and 500 GB of parity data.
In this figure, P represents the distributed parity data.
RAID 5
B
RAID 50
Logical Drive
=
1000 GB
plus Parity
RAID 5
A
Each RAID 5 Logical Drive has
500 GB Data Storage
250 GB Parity Data
Drive 1
250 GB
Drive 2
250 GB
Drive 3
250 GB
Drive 4
400 GB
Drive 5
400 GB
Drive 6
400 GB
Total Unused
Space = 150 GB
2, 6, P
4, P, 10
P, 8, 12
1, 5, P
3, P, 9
P, 7, 11
121
Proprietary and Confidential to PMC-Sierra, Inc.
Document No.: CDP-00278-02-A Rev. A, Issue:
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