#hardwareraid

The new upgraded hardware RAID chip significantly improves performance, increasing HDD read speeds by up to 63% and write speeds by up to 88% compared to last generation products. When using SSDs, speeds are up to 32% and 25% faster in read/write, respectively.

Whether you need hardware RAID depends on your usage needs and data importance. If you want to save money (who doesn't?), then you can use a single operating system to access the RAID array, or you are using RAID 0 or RAID 1, then using software RAID can have the same RAID protection and experience instead of higher-cost similar products.

If uptime and stability are important to you or your business, hardware RAID is very useful. Backup will help you to avoid catastrophic data loss. However, restoring large amounts of data (for example, in the event of a drive failure) may take several hours to perform. Hardware RAID allows you to withstand the failure of one or more drives without losing data and in many cases without causing any downtime. Hardware RAID is also useful if you are experiencing speed issues in multitasks, when applications are waiting to perform tasks on disk. By using hardware RAID, you can ensure that the high-speed array reads and writes data at a high speed, thereby providing you with additional throughput. In addition, if you use hardware RAID, the hardware RAID controller will include additional memory as a cache, which reduces the burden on the physical hardware and improves overall performance.

For hardware RAID, all drives are connected to a hardware RAID controller, which can be located on a separate RAID card, on a different server or built into the motherboard. The hardware RAID controller manages the RAID array, configures and supports multiple RAID levels. It contains a microprocessor (often called an I/O processor, or ROC ‘RAID on Chip’). In some cases, RAID controllers with their own processors can act as mini-computers because they have the ability to perform tasks independently. During the hardware RAID installation process, the drive is connected to the RAID controller board. This applies not only to large servers, but also to desktop computers. Processing hardware RAID refers to discrete controllers at the disk storage system level (such as ATA RAID, SATA, DELTA PLC, etc.).

PROS： Will not occupy or affect the performance of the computer or server; Compatible with different operating systems; Prevent data damage due to power outage during the backup process; It is easy to replace a failed disk.

CONS: The cost is higher than software RAID; If your RAID controller fails, you must find a compatible RAID controller to be replaced.

A simple way to describe software RAID is that the RAID task runs on the CPU of the computer system. It is a built-in function on many operating systems that can convert the disks connected to the server into a RAID array. All you need to do is to connect the drives and configure the desired RAID level.

What are the PROS and CONS of software RAID? PROS： Low cost; Easy to install; Same RAID driver can be implemented to the same operating system; If the processor performance is strong, it can easily handle RAID 0 and RAID 1.

CONS: Increasing the burden of the computer operating system; Replace a failed disk is relatively complicated; Limited to the RAID levels supported by a specific operating system; Performance will significantly decrease with complex RAID configuration, etc.

RAID is a data storage virtualization technology that combines multiple physical disk drive components into one or more logical units for the purposes of data redundancy, performance improvement, or both. Data is distributed across the drives in one of several ways, referred to as RAID levels, depending on the required level of redundancy and performance. The different schemes, or data distribution layouts, are named by the word "RAID" followed by a number, for example RAID 0 or RAID 1. Each scheme, or RAID level, provides a different balance among the key goals: reliability, availability, performance, and capacity. RAID levels greater than RAID 0 provide protection against unrecoverable sector read errors, as well as against failures of whole physical drives. The different modes (mirroring, striping and parity) are used to define the different RAID levels. Processing is required to carry out those actions, and that can take place on the host server's OS or in the storage array or controller which also called software RAID or hardware RAID. So, what are the pros and cons of software RAID vs. hardware RAID? Please stay tuned our updates in the next few days.