Stripe Size

[Steve Lochtir]

I will be using an HP server to hold repliceted data from several other servers. I will be copying the data from other servers to a large Net-Raid array on this server. My question is what would be the most efficient Stripe Size to use for copying data to the array? I will be using software simply copies the data from server to server.

Thanks

[Marco Hogeveen]

Steve,

The best stripe size depends on the use and configuration of your array.
Is it a RAID 1, RAID 0/1, RAID5?
How many disks?
What is more important for your: performance (use a larger stripe size) or efficient usage of diskspace (then use a smaller stripesize).
General rule for determining the stripsize is:Devide the blocksize of the data you??re receiving by the netto number of disks it is spread.
Example: for a RAID1 of 2 disks you can make the stripesize equal to the blocksize you??re receiving, so writing 1 block of data requires only one write action on both disks.
For a RAID5 of 5 disks, when you??re receiving 64k blocks, you have to devide 64 by 4 (5 disks - 1 for parity=4 disks netto) so you would use 16k stripesize here.
It may be difficult to determine the blocksize of the data you??re receiving, but these are some general rules.

Hope this helps.

Marco.