A systems administrator is configuring a new server that will be used for high-resolution video editing. The primary requirement for the video editing scratch disk is to achieve the maximum possible read and write performance to prevent dropped frames during editing. Data on this scratch disk is temporary and is backed up to a central NAS nightly, so fault tolerance for this specific volume is not a primary concern. The administrator has four identical SSDs available for this purpose. Which RAID configuration should the administrator use for the scratch disk to meet these specific requirements?
The correct answer is RAID 0. RAID 0, also known as striping, writes data across all disks in the array, which provides the highest possible read and write performance. This configuration is ideal for the described scenario, where performance is the top priority and fault tolerance is not a requirement. Since the data is temporary and backed up, the major drawback of RAID 0-the lack of redundancy-is an acceptable risk.
RAID 1 (mirroring) focuses on providing fault tolerance by writing identical data to two disks, but it does not increase performance and would not meet the primary requirement.
RAID 5 (striping with parity) offers a balance of performance and single-drive fault tolerance. However, the overhead of calculating and writing parity data makes it slower than RAID 0, particularly for write operations.
RAID 10 (a stripe of mirrors) provides both high performance and excellent fault tolerance. While very fast, it is not the absolute fastest configuration because of the mirroring overhead, and it would not utilize the full capacity of the four drives for performance gains in the way RAID 0 does.
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Why is RAID 0 the best choice for maximum read and write performance?
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Why does RAID 5 not meet the requirements for this scenario, despite providing fault tolerance?
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What are the main trade-offs between RAID 10 and RAID 0?