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Uncompromised Data Security

RAID subsystems are currently the most used storage sub-systems because of the high degree of data integrity and high data availability they offer. Data protection, accessibility and availability are the drivers for the success of RAID enterprise storage configurations. However, due to RAID built-in redundancy and data integrity enhancement algorithm, the performance is diminished in comparison to the performance of simple HDD configurations. The diminished performance can be significantly improved by using SSDs in the disk matrix, as illustrated in the figure below.

The example shows a RAID 5 configuration, which uses distributed parity generation and checking mechanism. In the upper configuration the SSD is used as a resilient write cache or a supplemental read-write cache. In the lower configuration, in addition to the supplemental cache function, SSDs are used as matrix disk members. Theoretically, all disk members of a RAID configuration can be replaced with SSDs. The number of usable SSDs utilized is based on a trade off between performance and cost.

Depending on the application, SSDs can be used as write cache, parity disk or matrix disk. Using SSDs to write the parity information greatly improves the overall RAID performance, as parity generation delays the write operation in an all-mechanical RAID configuration.

RAID systems can be used either in stand-alone computing configurations or in networked configurations. RAID, especially RAID 5, is nearly standard on configurations larger than desktop PCs.

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