While i was checking configuration of few server plans, i find very few of them use RAID drives or advertise same. Any special reason that many aren't into using RAID drive or have i not come across many good ones, yet?

I am just referring to how few of them bolden it out in their plans and others have no mention.

What are advantages of RAID drive?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Redunda...ependent_disks

I suspect the server has only one hard disk in many cases (to keep costs to a minimum), hence no mention of RAID.

Price Raid controllers cost money
and you need at least 2 disks for hardware raid

we do not run any server without it

the advatages as stated above redundacy
& performace depending on the raid level

Extra drives and RAID cards do cost more money, however the first time a drive fails and your RAID setup saves you from hours of downtime and hours of reconfiguring the server exactly how you had it before on a new drive, it is apparent how RAID really pays for itself.

bandboy,

As already posted in this thread Raid does increase the cost as there needs to be a second or third HD attached to the server. You will find providers who like to offer different remote backup solutions for safe keeping however in my view Raid is the way to go as it saves a lot of time when you have to restore your files, as raid duplicates data on both the drives like a clone.

Regards,
Scott T.

Thanks everyone for pitching in with good explanation and justifying the useage of RAID technology. In a way cost factor for RAID gets nullified should you ever have disk failure or corruptino as the downtime saved is money saved and reputation saved and this will cover its expenses in long run.

Hi,

be carefull with the choice of your harddrives. WD and Seagate offer drives for 24/7 usage at fair costs. For the controller take a look at the 3ware Controllers. I made good experiences with them.

kind regards,
Daniel

Have you made your decission? What drives have you bought?

regards, Daniel

We've found 3ware the best under linux (a lot of the onboard controllers don't work too well), and these cards aren't cheap so this pushes up prices and then for RAID as mentioned you need at least 2 drives (although we use at least 4) and then this also uses more power, and in the UK power is one of the constraining factors.

hi,

RAID - Redundant array Independent Disks

There are three primary reasons that RAID was implemented:

* Redundancy
* Increased Performance
* Lower Costs


Redundancy is the most important factor in the development of RAID for server environments. This allowed for a form of backup of the data in the storage array in the event of a failure. If one of the drives in the array failed, it could either be swapped out for a new drive without turning the systems off (referred to as hot swappable) or the redundant drive could be used. The method of redundancy depends on which version of RAID is used.

The increased performance is only found when specific versions of the RAID are used. Performance will also be dependent upon the number of drives used in the array and the controller. Like RAID 1 , 3 , 5 and 10


Though you are having RAID implemented you should have a back up solution in order to save your valuable data.

Raid isn't mentioned a lot simply due to the cost. A solid raid card is not cheap then add on the extra drives and its not cheap bit of hardware.

For a lot of hosts offering shared hosting they just do without raid to save a ton of money in the short term. They can get another duplicate drive with their primary for probably $20/month extra. Can be used for backups saves a lot of money. If they go with raid they're looking at an extra drive for raid-1 and a raid card that could be $70+ a month extra. If they are doing some of the other raid levels they may need 3+ drives. Along with the raid they still need backups so thats another big expense.

So at the end of it all they rather take the chance and the performance hit of not running any raid at all. But personally with all the drives that fail I feel uncomfortable without at least raid-1 on any machine and preferably raid-10 if performance is a big concern.

Decisions like these often take (or should take) into account the market you go after. The local jewelery shop looking for a web presence is unlikely to care or even know what you're taking about when you say RAID. They might think it's some kind of war game. So, if RAID is not a selling point, it might make little sense to spend money on it, when hosting these simple sites with little traffic, that don't tax the server.