Re: RAID5 gets a bad rap

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Chris Tyler wrote:
On Tue, 2008-12-30 at 01:02 -0800, Gordon Messmer wrote:
That's not quite it. RAID 5 performance suffers because every write requires that the entire block that's being written be read from every drive in the array, parity calculated, and then the data and parity written out. For each block written, the array has to do N reads plus two writes.

You don't have to read all of the drives -- just the block you're
updating and the parity block. XOR the old data you're about to
overwrite with the parity block and the new data and you'll have the new
parity block. Total activity: two reads plus two writes.

I've understood that to be the case, but while watching the drive activity lights on RAID5 arrays, it seems like I always see the entire set flash at the same time. I guess I'll have to investigate that further to find out why. Thanks.

RAID 5 tends to be most appropriate when you're trying to get as much disk space as you can with the lowest cost, you won't be running multiple simultaneous jobs on the same disk array, and when you'll be collecting data at a rate that's relatively low.

I'd say the other way around -- RAID 5 is poor at small writes (hence
the OP's comments about database updates), but very nearly approaches
RAID-0 speeds when reading or writing large quantities of sequential
data.

Your assertion ignores the fact that filesystems themselves are, in fact, databases. Real-world experience with many production systems and many workloads has convinced me to use RAID 5 as rarely as possible. Even when I'm forced to use it, I generally choose a RAID 5+0 configuration as I get much better performance.

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