Re: Database storage

nabble(dot)30(dot)miller_2555(at)spamgourmet(dot)com wrote:
> The database server is a quad core machine, so it sounds as though
> software RAID should work fine for the present setup. However, it
> sounds as though I should put some money into a hardware RAID
> controller if the database becomes more active. I had assumed RAID-5
> would be fine, but please let me know if there is another RAID level
> more appropriate for this implementation. Thanks for the valuable
> insight!
>

raid-5 performs very poorly on random small block writes, which is hte
majority of what databases do. raid10 is the preferred raid for databases.

btw: re earlier discussion of raid controllers vs software... I'm
surprised nooone mentioned that a 'real' raid controller with battery
backed writeback cache can hugely speed up committed 8kbyte block random
writes, which are quite often the big bottleneck in a transactional
database.