Table of Contents
Why RAID Matters
Hard drives fail. SSDs fail. NVMe drives fail. RAID provides a safety net — when one drive fails, your data survives. But different RAID levels offer different trade-offs between performance, redundancy, and storage efficiency.
RAID 0 — Striping (No Redundancy)
RAID 0 splits data across drives for maximum performance. A 2-drive RAID 0 doubles sequential read/write speeds. Zero redundancy — if any drive fails, all data is lost. Only use for cache drives or temporary scratch space.
RAID 1 — Mirroring
RAID 1 writes identical data to two drives. If one fails, the other contains a complete copy. Read performance is improved (reads can come from either drive). Write performance is similar to a single drive. Best for boot drives and critical system volumes.
RAID 5 — Striping with Parity
RAID 5 requires minimum 3 drives. Data and parity information are distributed across all drives. Can survive the failure of any one drive. Storage efficiency: (n-1)/n drives usable.
RAID 10 — Mirroring + Striping
RAID 10 combines RAID 1 and RAID 0. Requires minimum 4 drives. Offers both high performance and redundancy. Our recommended RAID level for database servers — it provides the best write performance with fault tolerance.
FAQ
Is RAID a substitute for backups?
Absolutely not. RAID protects against hardware failure but not against accidental deletion, ransomware, or file corruption. Always maintain separate backups regardless of RAID configuration.
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Enterprise NVMe Storage on Dedicated Servers
Power Down dedicated servers include enterprise NVMe with RAID configurations.
