Disk RAID vs. Network RAID

[jsellgren]

My company is looking to increase our storage capacity of our 2-node P4500 cluster. Currently we have each of the nodes configured with Disk RAID-5 and all of our LUN's configured with Network RAID 10 (Mirroring). 

My question is regarding the Network RAID configuration. If we re-do our LUN's (backup the data, delete the LUN's, and create new LUN's with Network RAID 0) what will be the impact of the data redundancy? I understand that the LUN will no longer be highly available as the data is no longer being mirrored between both nodes, but will the redundancy still be there because the Disk RAID is RAID-5?

I just want to make sure in the event we loose a HDD, I can replace it and retrieve the LUN as it was before the failure. 

Thank you!

[oikjn · Accepted solution]

if you go with network raid0, your data will be completely lost if one of your nodes loses two disks or if it decides to catch on fire :). in addition, if one node were to go offline temporarily, you would lose access to all LUNs until that missing node comes back online. I would highly suggest you stay away from network raid0 for any data that isn't expendable... for instance, I have a couple raid0 LUNs, but they are for some things like temp work storage or archival storage that has already been backed up. With raid0 you ahve to assume you WILL lose that data at some point and that at some other point it will be temporarily unavailable and how woudl that effect your organization.

[jsellgren]

Thank you oikjn....

That was the answer I was looking for!