Understanding RAID Block Size and Stripe Width
One of the first parameters relates to the width of the stripe. The stripe width will refer to the parallel stripes that you can write or read at the same time. The reading and writing performance improve as you increase the width. This occurs because the more drives added will improve the parallelism of your array, and that allows for access to more drives. In general, you will have superior transfer performance.
Normally, superior transfer of performance will take place on an eight 18GB drive better than if you have four 36GB in the same drive family. As a result, an 18GB drive will cost more than four 36GB, but you have other concerns like how to handle the power supply. In the second parameter, you have to look at the stripe size, also called the block size. Other terms that you might hear include stripe length, chunk size and granularity. When you hear those terms, it refers to the size of the stripes written on each disk.
Sloppy tech writers often say "stripe width", when they are actually meaning "stripe size." You can change this parameter easily since it is user defined. Stripe size does not have a one-size-fits-all solution. In some cases, the blocks-bit will be called the "IMMED," and this portion communicates with the software and tells it when to send the status back. The most important aspect of this is where you might find the bit and how you will identify it in a precise fashion.
When Would I Need Larger Stripe Sizes?
An environment with transactions will have a large number of reads and writes, and you will probably be better off with the larger stripe sizes. Along with stringing-aid and all the other things, RAID blocks will need balance to meet your requirements. In general, to meet the requirements, it is best recommended that you choose something that has a middle ground. When you improve the positioning performance, it results in increases in the stripe size.
Keep in mind that some controllers have been designed so that they do not write to the striped array until after they have enough data to fill the strip across the disks of the array. If the RAID has striping parity, this will often require an extra read to ensure the integrity of your parity information. Important to note, you should never overestimate the differences in stripe size.
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