High Performance RAID Solutions in the Workstation

EnvironmentRAID as a tool to improve system performance

reliability, value, and scalability

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RAID: Working Definitions

A Redundant Array of Independent Drives A method of protecting access to vital data and

improving system performance through hardware and software redundancy at the component, storage subsystem and system level

Three basic types of RAID: Intelligent - Runs on an independent processor, like the i960 Software - Shares the system CPU(s) with applications Hardware-assisted - Offloads some tasks, but uses system

resources for others (Typically, an ASIC for parity generation or memory control)

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RAID Levels

RAID 0 Striping. Data is striped across multiple disks.

RAID 1 Mirroring. Data is written identically to a multiple of two disks

simultaneously. RAID 3

Striping with Parity. Data is striped across multiple disks and parity is written to one additional disk.

RAID 5 Data and parity are written across multiple disks simultaneously.

JBOD (Just A Bunch Of Disks)

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Single Disk (No RAID)

Disk Drive

Data Stripes

Disk Drive

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RAID Level 0 - Disk Striping

Data Stripes

Disk Drive

RAID 0 uses disk striping. Multiple hard disks used to form a logical drive

Typically used in data rate intensive applications

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RAID Level 1 - Disk Mirroring

Data Stripes

Disk Drive

RAID 1 provides the highest level of fault tolerance to a single drive.

RAID 1 requires a multiple of two drives -- the primary set and the mirror set.

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RAID 3 - Disk Striping w/ Parity

Data Stripes

Disk Drive

Parity Stripes

RAID 3 and 5 stripes data across multiple drives and adds parity for fault tolerance.RAID 3 writes all parity information to one single drive.

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RAID 5 - Disk Striping w/ rotational

Parity

Data Stripes

Disk Drive

Parity Stripes

Mylex RAID 5 controllers implement “rotational parity” for increased drivereliability and reduced “single point of failure”.

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Gartner Group recommends MIS invest in technology to reduce labor costs $200 - $300 per node per year.

Intelligent RAID

Hardware15%

Software6%

LAN2%

Support77%

Source: Gartner Group Presentation 1995, Data from Real Decisions

Costs to Deploy and Support Systems

Design decisions that reduce support costs provide greater value to End Users and Support organizations

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Recovery$470

Prevention$193

Desktop administrator and/or tools$1,278

Source: Forrester Research, “Managing Unruly Desktops”

12%12%5%5%

14%14%

35%35%

34%34%

End userdowntime$1,350

Coworker time$54047%

Software $940Training $1,400

Hardware $2,000

Management$3,830

Annual Cost$8,000

Cost of Ownership with Intelligent RAID

End User TCO could decline by $ K’s with Intelligent RAID.

24%

17%12%

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Performance Gains with Intelligent RAID: Small Block Sequential

Intelligent RAID Doubles Throughput vs. Host-based RAID in small block sequential reads & writes

Business Disk WinMark 99

8650

6860

0

2000

4000

6000

8000

10000

AcceleRAID 150 Host-based RAID

Controller

KB

/sec

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Performance Gains with Intelligent RAID: Large Block Sequential

Intelligent RAID >50% faster than Host-based RAID with large block sequential transfers

High-End Disk WinMark 99

29000

18400

0

5000

10000

15000

20000

25000

30000

35000

AcceleRAID 150 Host-based RAID

Controller

KB

/sec

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Performance Gains with Intelligent RAID: CPU Loads

Intelligent RAID reduces CPU loads by 20% vs. Host-based RAID.

Small Numbers are Better.

Disk/Read CPU Utilization

15.95

19.93

0.00

5.00

10.00

15.00

20.00

25.00

AcceleRAID 150 Host-based RAID

Controller

CP

U %

Utilization

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Performance Gains with Intelligent RAID: Large File Copy

Measures time to copy four 88MB files. Run 3 times & averaged. Small Numbers are Better. Intelligent RAID is three times faster.

File Copy (4 x 88MB)

25.20

81.02

0.0010.0020.0030.0040.0050.0060.0070.0080.0090.00

AcceleRAID 150 Host-based RAID

Controller

Tim

e (

sec)

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The Value of Reliable Data Access:The Cost of Down Time

The cost of downtime estimated by Intel to be $48,075 per event for a company with $5M in annual sales vs a cost $0.06/GB/day to implement Intelligent RAID

http://www.intel.com/procs/SERVERS/i2otech/iraid/c_course.htm

A similar Study by Computer Select in 1996 estimated the average cost of downtime within large organizations to be $76,000 per hour

A 1995 Study by the Gartner Group sited the cost of down time per event at $209,000

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The Value of Reliable Data Access:The Cost of Down Time (continued)

“… 99% availability.... ‘This sounds great until you realize that the missing 1% represents about 90 hours - over three and a half days of downtime per year,’ says a report by The Standish Group International Inc. in Dennis, Mass.”

“QuickStudy: Clustering” Computerworld 12/21/98

“Downtime costs more than $50,000 per hour for 40% of the 1,850 IS officials surveyed. A few of the respondents said downtime costs a whopping $1 million per hour for their organizations.”

“Reliability Issues Stalk Client/Server”, Computerworld, 10/6/97

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Intelligent RAID Improves System Scalability

Intelligent RAID offloads the CPU Frees up cycles for applications Maximizes system bandwidth

Leverages personal and group productivity by minimizing downtime and TCO

Add Drives to the Array without downing the system On Line RAID Expansion in systems with hot spare/hot swap

support

PCI-based RAID controllers can attach as many as 45 drives per RAID controller, up to 8 controllers per system -- Up to 18TeraBytes per system configuration

External RAID controllers can attach as many as 500 drives, or 25TB per system

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Intelligent RAID is more Affordable than YOU Think!

RAID WAS Expensive Arcane Complex

RAID IS about the same cost as a SCSI Host Adapter as easy to install as a graphics card as easy to manage as your local hard drive flexible enough to configure inside or outside the system

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Typical Workstation RAID Applications

A transfer rate-intensive environment consists of: Applications that requires a large amount of data to be processed

in a fixed amount of time Video playback and video editing are typical transfer rate-intensive

environments Photo processing, manipulation and rendering

RAID 0 striping is ideal for transfer rate-intensive environments

RAID Optimizes Multithreaded OS performance Up to 256 commands can be queued to drives Controllers can disconnect from device, reconnect later when

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Applications that benefit from Intelligent RAID

Solutions for Uniting 2D and 3D.Mechanical Desktop®AutoCAD MechanicalGenius 14Genius Desktop 3Genius LT 98Genius VarioAutodesk IGES TranslatorAutodesk STEP TranslatorAutodesk VDAFS Translator

Professional visualization, modeling, and animation solutions from Kinetix®.

3D Studio MAX®3D Studio VIZ®Character Studio®RadioRay™

AutoDesk Professional CAD products

AutoCAD® Release 14R14 Internet UtilitiesAutoCAD LT®AutoCAD® Express ToolsAutoSketch®Autodesk View®Autodesk View DwgX™QuickCAD™ Millennium Edition

Geographic Information System (GIS) and mapping solutions

AutoCAD Map®Autodesk MapGuide™Autodesk World™

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RAID Levels at a Glance

RAID LEVEL

RAID 0

RAID 1

RAID 3

RAID 5

PERFORMANCE

HIGH

MEDIUM

HIGH (single threaded reads)

LIMITED

HIGH (small block reads)

LIMITED(Multiple writes required)

SECURITY

NONE

HIGH

HIGH

HIGH

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End User Benefits of Intelligent RAID

Performance Small Block, Large Block, Large File Applications

Data Protection Redundant, Reconstructable, 7 x 24 Data Access

Lower Total Cost of Ownership Reduced Support Cost Reduced Down Time Reduced Recovery Costs

Greater Scalability CPU Loads Storage Capacity