RAID Controller:
Definition:
What’s a RAID controller? A RAID Controller Card may be a card or chip placed between the software and a storage drive (usually a tough drive). If you wish to urge some info concerning the RAID, you’ll be able to move to MiniTool’s official web site to search out it.
What will a RAID controller do? They virtualize drives into totally different teams with specific information protection and redundancy features. The front-end interface generally communicates with the server through a host-based adapter (HBA). The backend communicates with and manages the underlying storage medium; it’s typically ATA, SCSI, SATA, SAS or Fibre Channel.
RAID controllers are classified by the multiple characteristics as well as drive types, specific RAID levels, and therefore the range of ports and supported drives. The RAID controller isn’t a storage controller. The storage controller provides the active disk to the system, whereas the RAID controller acts as a RAM cache and provides RAID functions.
Advantages:
Now, let’s see the benefits of the RAID controller card. The hardware-based RAID controller design is costlier than software-based RAID, however it can improve system performance while not booting errors. the benefits are as follows:
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Cache memory
Controller-based RAID generally provides extra dick cache memory to accelerate RAID operations.
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Dedicated process:
The controller-based system severally manages RAID configuration additionally to the operative system. Moreover, the capability and speed of RAID controllers are superior to software-only RAID since RAID controllers don’t need disk processing capabilities.
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Lack of boot errors:
And, it’s full of boot errors, which may injure the complete array as a result of software-only RAID residing on the operating system. However, RAID controllers will not be full of boot errors.
Hardware vs software system RAID Controllers:
Hardware-Based: RAID Controller:
The dedicated hardware controller has 2 totally different architectures: AN external RAID Controller Card and an indoor RAID-on-chip.
- RAID Controller Card: RAID controller card may be a growth card inserted into a PCIe or PCI-X motherboard slot. It’s a RAID processor and I/O processor with a drive interface.
- RAID-on-chip: Cheaper RAID-on-chip is a single motherboard chip with an integrated host interface, HDD I/O interface, RAID processor and memory controller.
Software system-Based: Server-Based RAID
Software RAID provides RAID services from the host. It has 2 types: software-only RAID and hybrid hardware/software RAID.
- Software-only RAID: As a native operates on the system, software-only RAID makes the smallest amount pricey of the RAID options. The host-based application manages RAID calculations and uses HBA or native I/O interfaces to connect to storage drives.
- Hybrid hardware RAID: Hybrid hardware/software RAID delivers RAID BIOS functions from the motherboard or HBA by employing a hardware component. Hybrid technology adds another layer and therefore the value of software-only is higher, however it will shield RAID systems from software error boot errors.
Different RAID Levels:
RAID controllers are specific to RAID levels. The foremost common levels are RAID zero, one, 5/6 and 10. the main points are as follows:
- RAID 0: Marking – RAID 0 is that the solely RAID level that doesn’t provide redundancy however only improves drive performance. RAID 0 divides files and splits information on 2 or additional disks and treats the divided disks collectively as partitions.
- RAID 1: Mirroring – RAID 1 works on two or more desktops to supply data redundancy and failover. It reads and writes identical data to every disk. If the reflected disk fails, the file will be absolutely gifted on a functioning disk.
- Raid 5/6: Marking with Parity/Double Parity – RAID 5/6 combines the performance of RAID zero with the redundancy of RAID 1, however needs concerning a simple fraction of the out there capacity.
- RAID ten: marking and Mirroring – RAID 10 is the costliest of the RAID levels. It’s stripy on a minimum of four disks to enhance performance and redundant on mirrors. In a very four-drive array, the system stripes information to 2 disks. The remaining two disks mirror the striped disks and every disk stores 1/2 the data.
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