Use host-based mirroring of virtual disks to increase overall system read performance and failure tolerance.

SFW provides host-based volume management to RAID subsystems, increasing overall data availability and I/O performance. With host-based volume management, software RAID can be applied across RAID subsystems from the same or different vendors, thus aggregating all the desirable properties of RAID subsystems.

In a mirrored configuration, read requests are handled in a round-robin fashion. The round-robin algorithm distributes read requests across all members, or "plexes," of a mirrored volume. Mirroring can increase read performance significantly.

Additionally, by configuring the hardware RAID subsystem-based virtual disks exported by different controllers as members of a host-based mirrored volume, the host-based mirrored volume provides protection against I/O bus, host bus adapter, enclosure power and cooling, RAID controller, and disk failures.