Raid 10 with hot spare

[Erjen]

Hi,

I searched a LOT on the internet, finding the right answer for using Raid 10 with a hot spare.
I can't find a "good" answer because everyone says something else and it looks like it depends on opions.. there must be something like "wrong" or "good", right?
So I want to use a NAS with 7 bays. I want to set it up with Raid 10 over 6 hard disks and the 7th as a hot spare.

Is this a right configuration and is it even possible or a good idea?

Hope someone can help me out and tell me the right answer.
Thanks!

 

[ss202sl]

Yes, it's possible. A hot spare buys you time to get a replacement drive in and still have redundancy in case another drive fails. A better solution may be a large raid 5 with 6 disks which will be faster and larger, and still provide redundancy and fault tolerance for 2 drives to fail. As long as you can get a replacement drive quickly you shouldn't need anything else. The best use for raid 10 would be to use a different raid 5 nas box(and mirror them), and then you'd be covered if an entire nas box went down.

 

[Erjen]

Yes, it's possible. A hot spare buys you time to get a replacement drive in and still have redundancy in case another drive fails. A better solution may be a large raid 5 with 6 disks which will be faster and larger, and still provide redundancy and fault tolerance for 2 drives to fail. As long as you can get a replacement drive quickly you shouldn't need anything else. The best use for raid 10 would be to use a different raid 5 nas box(and mirror them), and then you'd be covered if an entire nas box went down.

Ok thanks, that's just clear.
One more question: you say raid 5 is faster, but if I calculate the IOPS on this website: http://www.wmarow.com/strcalc/ it says that raid 5 has a lot less IOPS then raid 10.. now what is right?

 

[FireWire2]

Hi,

I searched a LOT on the internet, finding the right answer for using Raid 10 with a hot spare.
I can't find a "good" answer because everyone says something else and it looks like it depends on opions.. there must be something like "wrong" or "good", right?
So I want to use a NAS with 7 bays. I want to set it up with Raid 10 over 6 hard disks and the 7th as a hot spare.

Is this a right configuration and is it even possible or a good idea?

Hope someone can help me out and tell me the right answer.
Thanks!

With RAID10 you have more IOPS, with is a perfect for database application, but if you are used for storage media files, then RAID5 would do much better.

Note: I always use hardware RAID, I do not use or recommend software.