RAID Level 5 Data Redundancy: Theory & Reality
November, 2013
What's behind MTTDL's failure?
In A Highly Accurate Method for Assessing Reliability of RAID researchers from the NetApp and the University of Maryland, compared RAID theory against actual field data. They found that MTTDL calculations inaccurate for 3 reasons:
Repairable systems.
The typical MTTDL assumption is that once repaired - i.e. a disk is replaced with a new one and automatic RAID data recovery completed - the RAID system is as good as new. But this isn't true: at best, the system is only slightly better than it was right before hard drive recovery.
One component is new - but the rest are as old and worn as they were before the failure - so the system is not "like new". The system is no less likely to fail after the repair than it was before.
The problem is that in RAID arrays repairs take time: the disk fails; a hot spare or a new disk is added; and the data recovery starts - a process that can take hours or days - while the other components continue to age.
MTTDL calculations use the wrong failure distributions and incorrectly correlate component and system failures.
Failure modes
MTTDL typically considers only catastrophic disk failures and disks have latent errors as well. A catastrophic failure + latent error is a dual-disk failure, something RAID 5 can't handle.
Using field-validated distributions for these 4 transition events and Monte Carlo simulations, the researchers concluded:
The model results show that including time-dependent failure rates and restoration rates along with latent defects yields estimates of dual-disk failures that are as much as 4,000 times greater than the MTTDL-based estimates.
This is why RAID 5 has caused so much trouble to so many people over the last 20 years.
Source:www.zdnet.com
RAID Level 5 data redundancy: theory and reality
In theory, RAID 5 protects your data. In reality, RAID 5 is often a painful failure. Why? Mean time-to-data-loss (MTTDL) is a fraud: actual rates of double-disk failures are 2 to 1500 times higher than MTTDL predicts.What's behind MTTDL's failure?
In A Highly Accurate Method for Assessing Reliability of RAID researchers from the NetApp and the University of Maryland, compared RAID theory against actual field data. They found that MTTDL calculations inaccurate for 3 reasons:
- Errors in statistical theory of repairable systems.
- Incomplete consideration of failure modes.
- Inaccurate time-to-failure distributions.
Repairable systems.
The typical MTTDL assumption is that once repaired - i.e. a disk is replaced with a new one and automatic RAID data recovery completed - the RAID system is as good as new. But this isn't true: at best, the system is only slightly better than it was right before hard drive recovery.
One component is new - but the rest are as old and worn as they were before the failure - so the system is not "like new". The system is no less likely to fail after the repair than it was before.
The problem is that in RAID arrays repairs take time: the disk fails; a hot spare or a new disk is added; and the data recovery starts - a process that can take hours or days - while the other components continue to age.
MTTDL calculations use the wrong failure distributions and incorrectly correlate component and system failures.
Failure modes
MTTDL typically considers only catastrophic disk failures and disks have latent errors as well. A catastrophic failure + latent error is a dual-disk failure, something RAID 5 can't handle.
Using field-validated distributions for these 4 transition events and Monte Carlo simulations, the researchers concluded:
The model results show that including time-dependent failure rates and restoration rates along with latent defects yields estimates of dual-disk failures that are as much as 4,000 times greater than the MTTDL-based estimates.
This is why RAID 5 has caused so much trouble to so many people over the last 20 years.
Source:www.zdnet.com