Is RAID 5 worth it (performance wise vs redundancy)?

c4onastick · 06-04-2007, 12:16 AM

I've got a little home server (Slackware 10.2) that I have apache, counter-strike, and samba running on. The server sees moderate traffic (6-10 local clients + the webserver) and aside from the information on the samba shares, I wouldn't be too heartbroken if I had a drive fail. I was thinking about adding a SATA controller card and setting up software raid and LVM. The server's an old AMD XP 1600+. What do you guys think? Is it worth it?

prozac · 06-04-2007, 01:12 AM

IMO, if you are thinking software RAID, I would not advise RAID 5.

Some info from the NET:

Quote:

RAID 5 Controller Requirements: Requires a moderately high-end card for hardware
RAID; supported by some operating systems for software RAID, but at a
substantial performance penalty.

Quote:

RAID 5 is seen by many as the ideal combination of good
performance, good fault tolerance and high capacity and storage
efficiency. It is best suited for transaction processing and is often used
for "general purpose" service, as well as for relational database
applications, enterprise resource planning and other business systems. For
write-intensive applications, RAID 1 or RAID 1+0 are probably better
choices (albeit higher in terms of hardware cost), as the performance of
RAID 5 will begin to substantially decrease in a write-heavy environment.

kromberg · 06-04-2007, 08:30 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by c4onastick

I wouldn't be too heartbroken if I had a drive fail.

You just answered your question. Even in software raid, there is a bit a advantage to run stripping though.

Keith