Whether clients belong in the small business, small home office, government or education category, they should treat their data and its access as a means of productivity as very important. ArrowQuick believes in making every effort to protect its client’s interests in terms of data and productivity. One key area where technology plays a vital role in maintaining client’s best interests is redundant disk arrays.
Data storage is the most critical of technologies on a system where servers populate the network. Even in peer-to-peer networks, the safety of the client’s data is paramount. Yet many times, businesses will skimp or balk at the cost of protecting their business’ most vital asset. Truth be told, hard drive technologies have placated customers who want vast amounts of storage, but reliability has suffered in the meantime.
So what is the best course of action of any business today? Redundant Arrays of Inexpensive Disks (RAIDs) have been available since the late 1980s when hard drive prices began to drop for mainstream use and Texas Instruments developed an interface between computers and multiple drive units called SCSI. The concept of RAID was developed at Standford University in their computer sciences department.
While there are many levels of RAIDs, there are three primary levels in use today by businesses. Each has its advantages in certain circumstances. RAID 0 utilizes a minimum of 2 drives where data is striped across the hard disks. This method has the advantage of being very fast as the computer can write data faster to 2 drives than 1 drive. RAID 1 allows the mirroring of one hard drive to another hard drive of exactly the same size and allows for redundancy of company data.
RAID Level 5 utilizes a minimum of 3 drives and gives the system good speed and a high level of reliability by striping data and also writing “parity” data which allows for the reconstruction of data should a drive fail. Good RAID systems have a controller card or chipset that operates independently of the main computer’s CPU and the operating system installed on that computer system. As a bonus, most RAID setups will also feature “hot-swappable” drives which means a failed drive can be replaced without disruption to the data you use on a constant basis.
Client’s servers tend to run over a longer period of time than workstations, which need to be replaced more often. Servers with multiple processors, power supplies and RAID storage offer the best long term value for clients who want worry-free data redundancy. Whether you are a SOHO or larger organization, your data deserves protection and you deserve to have as much uptime and productivity as possible; RAID solutions from ArrowQuick Solutions provides customers with just the right products.
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