Best RAID Setup for My Servers

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Posted by DJFraz, 09-01-2010, 04:10 AM
As I was building my business plan I began thinking of hardware failure. I know I may be lacking in information so let me know what else information will be needed, but which version of RAID would be best for shared hosting servers and also dedicated servers and why. Thank you in advance.
Posted by matt2kjones, 09-01-2010, 08:38 AM
There is no "right" raid for dedicated servers. It all depends on your reliability to performance ratios and cost. If you want just protection with little performance hit and quite cost effective, then raid 1 will probably suffice.
Posted by DJFraz, 09-01-2010, 09:23 AM
What about raid 10? I know it's both 1 and 0 together and also I've heard write speeds are slower maybe as it has to write all data to each drive like 1.
Posted by matt2kjones, 09-01-2010, 09:45 AM
It should be quicker, as its two raid 1's over spanned over a raid 0. So when you write data to the raid, it writes some of it to the first raid1 set and some of it to the other raid1 set, in parallel. It is like using raid 0 with standard discs (you get the performance increase) but you keep the reliability. of course, raid10 is wasteful of space, as is raid1, but for a simple 2 disc/4 disc solution, its not expensive.
Posted by DJFraz, 09-02-2010, 12:16 AM
Hmmm... What is more reliable, or more used throughout the server world?
Posted by MikeTrike, 09-02-2010, 12:25 AM
Plenty of detailed explanations on wiki: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RAID
Posted by matt2kjones, 09-02-2010, 09:10 AM
I personally use raid1 on my servers and have never had any problems. But if you have intensive database activity, for example, then you might want to choose a different raid level. If you google raid levels then you should be able to find quite allot of information on the different raid levels and what scenario's they are good for. If you just want to add a layer of redundancy to your server without trying to increase its performance then raid1 will probably be find for you. Also, bare in mind alot of the higher raid levels need more disks, so if you are looking to save power in datacenters, then that may also be another thing which sways your decision.
Posted by DJFraz, 09-02-2010, 03:44 PM
Just to be safe and have something going for data safety I can run RAID 1 on my shared servers and a user option for the dedicated.

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