RAID-5 (striping with parity)

Although both mirroring (RAID-1) and RAID-5 provide redundancy of data, they use different methods. Mirroring provides data redundancy by maintaining multiple complete copies of the data in a volume. Data being written to a mirrored volume is reflected in all copies. If a portion of a mirrored volume fails, the system continues to use the other copies of the data.

RAID-5 provides data redundancy by using parity. Parity is a calculated value used to reconstruct data after a failure. While data is being written to a RAID-5 volume, parity is calculated by doing an exclusive OR (XOR) procedure on the data. The resulting parity is then written to the volume. The data and calculated parity are contained in a plex that is "striped" across multiple disks. If a portion of a RAID-5 volume fails, the data that was on that portion of the failed volume can be recreated from the remaining data and parity information. It is also possible to mix concatenation and striping in the layout.

Figure: Parity locations in a RAID-5 model shows parity locations in a RAID-5 array configuration.

Figure: Parity locations in a RAID-5 model

Parity locations in a RAID-5 model

Every stripe has a column containing a parity stripe unit and columns containing data. The parity is spread over all of the disks in the array, reducing the write time for large independent writes because the writes do not have to wait until a single parity disk can accept the data.

RAID-5 volumes can additionally perform logging to minimize recovery time. RAID-5 volumes use RAID-5 logs to keep a copy of the data and parity currently being written. RAID-5 logging is optional and can be created along with RAID-5 volumes or added later.

Note:

VxVM supports RAID-5 for private disk groups, but not for shareable disk groups in a CVM environment. In addition, VxVM does not support the mirroring of RAID-5 volumes that are configured using Veritas Volume Manager software. RAID-5 LUNs hardware may be mirrored.

More Information

Veritas Volume Manager RAID-5 arrays