Raid setup comparison - Part 2/2

(RAID 5 vs RAID 6 vs RAID 10 )

This follows the first post regarding read / write test comparison against various RAID Setup. Note that in the use case we tested the following partitions :
- a RAID 5 Lun Parition with 5 Disks , 
- a RAID 6 Lun Parition with 5 Disks , 
- two different RAID 10 partition on on a lun using 6 Disks and another one using 8 disks.

The server used is a IBM x336 series with 16GB of RAM, windows 2003 x64 installed. The setup raid was local to the machine, the cache controller was integrated to the machine and its size was 256MB.

Following is the legend table to help you to interpret the different test cases scenario therefore will you find all the detail of each scenario that has been tested :

Test Case	threads#	Block Size (KB)	Out. Request	Duration
T1	2	64	1	120 seconds
T2	2	64	2	120 seconds
T3	2	64	4	120 seconds
T4	2	64	8	120 seconds
T5	2	64	16	120 seconds
T6	2	64	32	120 seconds
T7	2	64	64	120 seconds
T8	2	64	128	120 seconds

A. Result extracted for write performance :

• Table Presentation

			T1	T2	T3	T4	T5	T6	T7	T8
1	RAID6 -  9HD;1T;7200k -	MB/S	25.84	26.84	22.28	26.73	23.07	24.42	30.58	27.22
	RAID6 - 9HD;1T;7200k -	IO/S	413.45	429.49	356.55	427.75	369.16	390.77	489.30	435.56
2	RAID5 - 5HD;1T;7200k -	MB/S	17.61	19.51	19.62	20.91	21.00	19.05	21.32	20.20
	RAID5 -  5HD;1T;7200k -	IO/S	281.83	312.24	313.92	334.59	336.14	304.86	341.16	323.32
3	RAID10 -  6HD;146Go;15kFC -	MB/S	66.41	70.88	73.27	68.22	61.87	62.10	71.78	74.44
	RAID10 -  6HD;146Go;15kFC -	IO/S	1062.70	1134.21	1172.37	1091.59	990.04	993.60	1148.51	1191.04
4	RAID10 -  8HD;300Go;15kFC -	MB/S	78.41	89.17	100.07	108.70	110.07	108.10	112.21	107.55
	RAID10 -  8HD;300Go;15kFC -	IO/S	1254.59	1426.80	1601.18	1739.20	1761.27	1729.73	1795.36	1720.81

• Graph Presentation

B. Result extracted for read performance :

• Table Presentation

		Type	T1	T2	T3	T4	T5	T6	T7	T8
1	RAID6 - 9HD;1T;7200k -	MB/S	21.17	39.34	62.95	86.31	102.64	111.41	119.42	119.62
	RAID6 - 9HD;1T;7200k -	IO/S	338.84	629.45	1007.32	1381.07	1642.37	1782.65	1910.72	1913.98
2	RAID5 - 5HD;1T;7200k -	MB/S	15.49	26.56	35.59	42.37	44.22	43.99	44.72	44.45
	RAID5 - 5HD;1T;7200k -	IO/S	247.90	425.08	569.53	678.01	707.58	703.85	715.65	711.33
3	RAID10 - 6HD;146Go;15kFC -	MB/S	37.08	60.20	92.65	119.86	124.92	130.66	135.52	137.32
	RAID10 - 6HD;146Go;15kFC -	IO/S	593.40	963.34	1482.50	1917.91	1998.84	2090.68	2168.37	2197.15
4	RAID10 - 8HD;300Go;15kFC -	MB/S	41.60	76.63	118.05	174.60	192.70	189.30	180.71	185.79
	RAID10 - 8HD;300Go;15kFC -	IO/S	665.60	1226.20	1888.93	2793.66	3083.24	3028.83	2891.40	2972.75

• Graph Presentation

Result : As for the interpretation of the output we can clearly see that setup in RAID 10 is still the more the most efficient in regards our tests scenarios. For read and write instructions it has demonstraste to be faster quite significantly for reads and even more for write operations.