Advanced RAID functions
RAID Recovery - Advanced RAID functions
N-way mirroring, splitting and hiding
N-way mirroring, array hiding, and array splitting are the collection of advanced features. While these comprehensive features are united, offer most demanding features- data protection against threats of system, unintentional data deletion and viruses. They all support wide range of performance. For example, N-way mirroring provides competitive advantages in comparison to simple two-way mirroring by creating and using additional mirrors of a data set; array splitting helps separating from the active array; and the array hiding enables an array to become imperceptible to both users as well as the operating system. It is visible only to a privileged administrator.
All these features help a system administrator manage a secure backup of the active data array via three procedures: deploy N-way mirroring, the administrators create a three-way mirroring; remove one of the mirrors from the active array through the array splitting; they make the split mirror invisible from users. Any disaster can lead the administrators to follow some processes to access the better performance for example, removing the data in the infected array, exposing the concealed array, and renovating the active array using ORLM to involve the better mirror. But, any modifications after splitting off the data would not reflect in the previously hidden data.
Drive roaming
Drive roaming helps moving the disks uninterruptedly between the systems by eliminating the needs to keep monitoring or maintaining which drive is connected to which RAID controller. Drive roaming is responsible for doing on behalf of users. It performs efficiently and significantly for applications that help accelerate moving large amount of data smoothly between the systems.
Controller spanning
Controller spanning helps an array to extend disks attached to several RAID controllers which actually allows making large arrays with high throughput rates. An example can make it clear, in case of four RAID controllers with eight drives each, controller spanning helps creating an array that spans to all thirty-two disk drives. This is responsible for improved I/O transfer performance with thirty-two spindles in a single array.
Distribute parity
Distribute parity is designed to meet the requirements of enterprise-class RAID. It saves enough disk space on each included disk results into large empty space equal to the largest drive in the array. Its specialised techniques for advanced ongoing performance make it poles apart from standard and non-distributed approach.
These enhanced features of RAID were only accessible among large enterprises who could meet the highest budget requirement but the emerging of lower priced storage technologies resolved the issues of lone developer, small as well as medium-sized enterprises started enjoying the same power at lowest cost.
