IMPROVE DATA INTEGRITY AND PROTECTION
vRAID
Data integrity and protection are top priorities for the StorONE Storage Engine. The most common threat is data loss due to drive failure. vRAID is StorONE's patented high-performance erasure coding integrated into the StorONE Storage Engine.

The Fastest Rebuilds in the Industry!
vRAID, even on high-density drives, provides the fastest rebuild times in the industry. StorONE measures its flash rebuild times in minutes, and our hard drive rebuild times are typically less than a couple of hours. StorONE tested its rebuild performance in a recent test in an array powered by a mid-range server and populated with 14TB hard disk drives. After failing a drive, vRAID returned all volumes to a protected state within 1 hour and 45 minutes!
Watch our 14TB Drive Raid Rebuild Test
RAID (Redundant Array of Independent Disks) is a storage virtualization technology, developed in the late 1980s, which allows a large number of inexpensive hard drives to be linked together to form a single high capacity storage device that offers superior performance, storage capacity, and reliability over previous storage solutions. RAID is a form of parallel I/O processing that spreads the workload over a number of disk devices, summing their performance, while providing four primary advantages over stand-alone disks. Those advantages are redundancy, higher performance, increased fault tolerance, and lower costs. Physical RAID volumes are presented as a single, logical hard drive to the Operating System (OS). RAID utilizes a method known as disk striping to partition the storage space on each drive into logical units that can range from a single sector of 512 bytes up to several megabytes. These stripes on the disks of an array are interleaved and addressed in order. The various striping methods are referred to as RAID levels.
A RAID Rebuild is a process by which a RAID array is reconstructed in the event of a hard drive failure. The RAID array copies data to a spare drive while the failed drive is replaced. The RAID array then reconstructs data on the new drive using special RAID algorithms and parity data. RAID rebuild times are a serious concern for storage administrators since during the rebuild process, the performance of applications and processes are impacted by latency, which in turn impacts users’ productivity. High-density drives or multiple drive failures can result in extended rebuild times that can take days or even longer.
Parity, or more properly, the parity bit is a simple form of error detection that checks to see if data is lost or overwritten when moving it from one place in storage to another or when transmitting it between computers. Since data transmission in not entirely an error-free process, data may not be received the same way it was transmitted. The parity bit adds checksums into the data that enable the target device to determine if the data was received correctly.
- There are at least nine types of RAID plus a non-redundant array (RAID-0) with the most commonly used RAID levels today being 5, 6 and 60 as described below:
- RAID-5: This standard type includes a rotating parity array, thus addressing the write limitation in RAID-4. Consequently, all read and write operations can be overlapped. RAID-5 stores parity information but not redundant data (although parity information can be used to reconstruct data). RAID-5 requires at least three and usually five disks for the array. It's best for multi-user systems in which performance is not critical or which do few write operations.
- RAID-6: This standard type is similar to RAID-5 but includes a second parity scheme that is distributed across different drives and thus offers extremely high fault and drive-failure tolerance.
- RAID-60: This is a type of Nested (Hybrid) RAID level that combines the block-level striping feature RAID level 0 with the distributed dual parity of RAID level 6. It contains the same multi-level disk set as RAID 6 but supports more drives. It requires a minimum of 8 disks in order to operate.

Mix Drive Sizes without Reformatting!
As a StorONE Storage Engine customer expands their capacity, they can immediately use the highest capacity drives available to them without changing volume or RAID configurations. vRAID will automatically start to redistribute data to the new drives, ensuring the customer enjoys every drive's full capacity.

Full Application Performance During Recovery!
Because every StorONE system has a high-performance flash tier, applications and users can enjoy its full performance even during a RAID rebuild. All write activity and most-read activity continues to be served from the flash tier. As a result, the hard disk tier can focus primarily on the rebuild process and deliver completion in record time.

No Hot Spares!
With StorONE's vRAID, all drives are active, eliminating the need for hot spares. There is no need to race to the data center to replenish the drive reserves. vRAID rebuilds occur by redistributing data from the failed drive across the remaining drives, thus eliminating the single drive bottleneck. The elimination of hot spares also means every drive's capacity is working for the organization instead of sitting idle.

The ROI of Better RAID
StorONE's vRAID delivers a better ROI than any other media protection technique on the market: