Any work done on computers needs to be stored, which means as we have discussed- data storage is an important aspect of having computers. There are many options available like using disks, HDDs.
RAID stands for Redundant Array of Inexpensive Disks.
There are loads of storage devices, so, What makes RAID different from all those storage devices?
Total Disk Drive Failure caused due to electrostatic discharge or moisture will damage the disk.This is the pre-eminent failure mode that RAID protects against.
The loss of data can be prevented by using RAID.
Lets first get to know about Fiber Channel:
In our world where everyone wants everything to happen in a flash of a second, there is no time to waste. Data transfer can be, a time consuming process at times. Here comes the need to have high speed data links to transfer data faster. Fiber Channel (FC) was introduced and developed for practical,inexpensive purposes and this can transfer data quickly between workstations,mainframes, supercomputers, storage devices and other peripherals.
Fibre Channels operate at a wide variety of speeds ie, 133 Mbit/s, 266 Mbit/s, 530 Mbit/s, and 1 Gbits/s and on three types of both electrical and optical media.
According to the combination of speed and media the transmission distances vary.
Fiber Channel RAID(Redundant Array of Inexpensive Disks) supports multiple protocol disk interfaces.
It can manage many kinds of disk storage devices with different physical interfaces in the same time and different kinds of disks can also be bound in one logical RAID group.
Fiber Channel RAID storage solutions ensures that there is no failure and therefore protects the data i.e it offers true no single-point-of-failure data protection.
These solutions are SAN(Storage Area Network) ready so you can connect directly to your server using a Fiber Channel HBA or purchase a fabric switch and start building your own SAN.
The two main factors which is involved is increased data reliability and increased I/O performance. RAID technology is said to be in RAID array which means that the array distributes data across several disks but is seen as one single disk by the user.
RAID controller retrieve data from the array by using specific RAID levels. These levels 0, 1, and 5 are the most commonly found, and cover most requirements.
RAID 0 (striped disks)
It distributes data across several disks but all the data will be lost on all disks if any one disk fails.
RAID 1 (mirrored disks)
It uses two or more disks which stores the same data so that when one fails the other disks data is always available. Total capacity of the array is just the capacity of a single disk.
RAID 5 (striped disks with parity)
It combines three or more disks that protects data against loss of any one disk. The storage capacity of the array is reduced by one disk. The less common-
RAID 6 can recover from the loss of two disks.
With these many advantages with RAID technology, those looking for faster and efficient transfer of data will undoubtedly opt to use the RAID technology.