Compaq ProLiant 3000 SMART-2DH Array Controller Reference Guide - Page 145
Performance Enhancement, Distributing Data and Data Striping
View all Compaq ProLiant 3000 manuals
Add to My Manuals
Save this manual to your list of manuals |
Page 145 highlights
D-12 Understanding Drive Arrays Performance Enhancement Drive arrays allow data access performance to be dramatically enhanced over non-arrayed drives. In addition the SMART-2DH Controller has several other performance enhancement features that are discussed here. Distributing Data and Data Striping Distributing data makes it possible to access data concurrently from multiple drives in an array. This yields I/O rates many times faster than non-arrayed drives. Distributing data allows data striping. Data striping is automatically generated on an array controller in order to store user data. A stripe is a collection of contiguous data that is distributed evenly across all physical drives in a logical drive. The width of the stripe (the amount stored on each physical drive) is selected to optimize the performance of the operating system. For example, consider an operating system that typically requests data in 32sector blocks. The SMART-2DH Controller distributes the data so that the first 32 sectors of data are on the first drive in the array. The SMART-2DH Controller continues distributing the next 32 sectors on the second drive, the next 32 sectors on the third drive, and so on. Evenly distributed data in an array improves performance by allowing access to all drives simultaneously. DATA 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 Daz-9-11.EPS DATA 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 DATA 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 DATA 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 Writer: Pamela King Project: SMART-2DH Array Controller Reference Guide Comments: 295469-002 File Name: K-APPD.DOC Last Saved On: 2/27/98 12:06 PM COMPAQ CONFIDENTIAL - NEED TO KNOW REQUIRED