Which RAID level offers the best performance, redundancy, and availability for a RIS database?

RAID 10, also known as RAID 1+0, combines the features of both RAID 1 and RAID 0, making it an excellent choice for balancing performance, redundancy, and availability. In a RAID 10 configuration, data is mirrored across pairs of disks (as in RAID 1) and then striped across multiple mirrored sets (as in RAID 0). This structure allows for significant enhancements in performance due to the striping, which distributes read and write loads across multiple disks, thus increasing throughput.

At the same time, the mirroring aspect ensures that there is redundancy. If one disk in a mirrored pair fails, the data remains intact on the other disk, allowing for continuous availability of the data. In terms of fault tolerance, RAID 10 can withstand multiple disk failures as long as they don’t occur within the same mirror set.

Additionally, RAID 10 offers better write performance than RAID 5 because it doesn’t require the overhead of calculating and writing parity data, which can slow down write operations. This makes RAID 10 particularly well-suited for environments with high transaction volumes, like those often found in Radiology Information Systems (RIS) databases.

Overall, RAID 10 is favored in applications requiring not just performance