![]() ![]() But opting to go RAID-1 instead of RAID-5 forces a larger investment in drives since you are always losing half your total spanned disk size to redundancy. ![]() This is why I never use RAID-5 in production scenarios since I can easily take any disk off a RAID-1 and recover files off of it, as if it never existed in a RAID configuration. Disks that are outside of their natural array environment (specifically, their native controller and array) are near useless for data recovery purposes unless you are willing to shell out in the thousands for a professional clean room to do the job. You almost always have to take the system(s) in question out of service for periods of time when the upgrades are being done, and the older servers get, the more tenuous this procedure becomes.Īdvanced RAID types, like RAID-5, allow us to leverage greater amounts of space per pool of drives, but they also come with an inherent flaw: they are disgustingly hard to recover data from. Upgrading RAID-1 arrays with larger disks is a pain in the rear. Then there's the inherent problem with scaling out your arrays as your needs grow. In server environments, even for relatively simple layouts prevalent at small businesses we support, doing a hardware RAID the right way entails using enterprise grade disks, add-in RAID cards, and the knowledge to configure everything in a reliable manner. What are some of the biggest drawbacks to hardware RAID arrays? Cost and complexity, by far. Dependability is what business IT consulting is all about we're not here to win fashion or feature awards. ![]() Tested, tried, proven, and just rock-solid in the areas that count. For systems that cannot be offloaded into the cloud, and must be kept onsite, my company has had excellent luck with running dual RAID-1 arrays on Dell servers. That's a mouthful.Īny IT pro worth their weight knows that depending on RAID is a necessity for redundancy in production-level workloads. Storage Spaces is more of a software-driven dynamic drive pooling technology at heart. Perhaps that's the wrong way to phrase it after all, software RAID comes with a lot of negative connotations, judging by its checkered past. With the release of Windows 8 and Server 2012, Microsoft took the wraps off of two technologies that work in conjunction to usher in a new era of software RAID. I wasn't impressed, and never recommended it to customers or colleagues alike. While I've never played with Drive Extender, I have given Windows drive mirroring and striping limited trials on a personal basis in the XP and Vista days with grim results. Chalk me into the column that handles software RAID with a ten foot pole. Cliche or not, a third time may be the charm that raises eyebrows of the skeptical many. So Redmond is a clear 0 for 2 on its attempts to reign in a life after RAID. The premature nature of dynamic drive pooling in Windows, coupled with the arguably inferior file system NTFS, was the perfect storm for showing Drive Extender the door. It showed up in the first version of the now-dead Windows Home Server line, but was stripped out of the second and final release because of how knowingly buggy the technology was. Then Microsoft gave a technology called Drive Extender a short run, which was for all intents and purposes the rookie season for Storage Spaces. And for just as long, it has been plagued by sub-standard read/write performance which is why everyone who tried it always ran back to their hardware RAID. Native Windows drive mirroring (read: software RAID) has been in every Windows release since Win 2000. How many times has Microsoft tried to usher in the post-RAID era? Every previous try has either been met with gotchas, whether it be performance roadblocks, technical drawbacks, or outright feature deprecation. If you're like most other IT pros I know, you're probably already cringing just at the title of this article. ![]()
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