HP Surestore Disk Array 12h - And FC60 User Manual page 131

Note
RAID level
Setting:
Function: Sets the RAID level used by the LUN.
Performance Impact: The RAID level selected impacts the entire performance profile for the
LUN. Read I/O and write I/O performance are directly influenced by the RAID level. See
Level Comparisons" on page 45
RAID level.
Stripe segment size
Setting:
Function: Sets the number of blocks of data the controller will write to or read from a single disk
before switching to the next disk in the LUN.
Performance Impact: Optimum performance is typically achieved when the segment size
matches the I/O size. In this case, only one disk is required to service an I/O, leaving the
remaining disk in the LUN available for other I/Os.
A large segment size provides good read performance in most RAID levels. The controller will
have to access fewer disks to retrieve the data, leaving the remaining drives available for other
I/O operations. Large segment sizes are typically useful for applications that require high I/O
throughput.
A small logical unit segment size is useful for most RAID 5 write applications, because the
controller firmware is capable of performing group writes (writing of data simultaneously to
multiple disks, while calculating the parity for the stripe, as opposed to the single-threaded read-
modify-write). Small segment sizes are typically useful for applications that require large
numbers of small I/Os to be processed quickly.
for more information on the performance characteristics of each
"RAID
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