Intel RAID Controllers Interoperability Guide

Setup Array using an Intel® RAID Controller DIY Storage System Guidance Using Intel® Server RAID Controllers Deployment Practices White Paper

Revision 1.0

5. Setup Array using an Intel

RAID Controller

Intel is committed to providing customers with stable, high-performance, and highly reliable

RAID products. However, to optimize RAID performance for a specific application, customers

must understand the key factors that can affect the performance of the RAID subsystem and the

relationship between the target application and those key factors so that the array can be setup

accordingly during system configuration.

The following sections introduce the key factors and then provide a demo for setting up a server

for a surveillance application.

5.1 Basic Introduction of RAID Setting for Performance Optimizing

Optimizing the overall performance of a RAID subsystem requires careful consideration of

several factors that can affect performance, including the controller and disk drive cache

settings and the interaction of these settings with system applications. The following sections

provide a limited discussion of some of these factors. For a full review of performance tuning,

refer to the Intel

RAID Controller Performance Optimization White Paper available at

http://support.intel.com/support/motherboards/server/

Note: There are a variety of factors that can affect the performance of the RAID subsystem

including PCI bus bandwidth, logical drive cache settings, stripe size, hard disk drive cache

settings, RAID level, ratio of read versus write operations, ratio of sequential versus random

operations, and the number of disks in an array.

5.1.1 RAID Level

The Intel

RAID controller SRCSASPH16I supports RAID levels 0, 1, 5, 6, 10, 50, and 60. To

ensure the best performance, the optimal RAID level should be selected when the system drive

is created. The optimal RAID level for a disk array depends on a number of factors:

 The number of physical drives in the disk array

 The capacity of the physical drives in the array

 The need for data redundancy

 The disk performance requirements

The following table provides a quick reference for RAID level selection. This information is

simplified and may not be accurate with some applications or tests.

Table 7. RAID Level Selection

Application Remarks

Recommendation

Operating System Installation the operation system only.

Application Server Users access application from the server, but store data in the local

system

R0 or R5

Developer Server Users transfer data from the server to the local system, edit, and

return it to the server

R5 or R6