Loading...

Evaluation of Fault Tolerance of Software RAID vs. Hardware RAID Controller

Montazer Zohoor, Behrang | 2024

197 Viewed
  1. Type of Document: M.Sc. Thesis
  2. Language: Farsi
  3. Document No: 57015 (19)
  4. University: Sharif University of Technology
  5. Department: Computer Engineering
  6. Advisor(s): Asadi, Hossein
  7. Abstract:
  8. The use of an array of independent disks (RAID) in data storage systems is a common approach for data storage and maintenance to achieve high performance and high reliability demanded by customers. In the past decades, the use of dedicated hardware RAID controllers has been very popular. By reducing the cost of producing general-purpose processors, it is more likely to achieve higher processing power at a lower cost, which has led to the tendency of manufacturers of data storage systems to use software RAID. However, making a decision regarding the replacement of software solutions with a hardware RAID controller requires exploration of error and failure models in the software solution and the built-in mechanisms to mitigate them. Our detailed literature study shows that no previous work has been done so far to compare the performance and failure tolerance of software RAID against to hardware RAID controller. Using previous studies and field studies, this research investigates the most important threats of failure tolerance in software RAID array and compares them with similar challenges in hardware implementation. For this purpose, failure types such as power outage, how to rebuild a damaged disk, human error in the wrong disk exit, and how to manage hot spare disks in the real environment are examined and compared. Also, to conduct the experiments, a commercial data storage system equipped with a hardware RAID controller is used, and software tests are performed on the md module of the Linux operating system using the mdadm tool. The obtained results show that software RAID can withstand against all experimented failure types
  9. Keywords:
  10. Hardware Redundant Array of Independent Disks (RAID)Controller ; Software Redundant Array of Independent Disks (RAID) ; Fault Tolerance ; Data Storage ; Redundant Array of Independent Disks (RAID)

 Digital Object List

 Bookmark

...see more