RAID 60 (Striping RAID 6 Arrays)

RAID 60 incorporates the technique of striping (RAID 0) across multiple RAID 6 arrays. RAID 6 uses the striping technique in combination with dual parity to provide high fault tolerance. At least eight physical disks are required to create a RAID 60 array, as shown in Figure 1.

Table 1 describes RAID 60 across a number of parameters.

Table 1  RAID 60

Parameter

Rating

Description

Read Performance

Read/write performance is similar to RAID 6. Read performance is good (due to striping) but write performance is comparatively lower because of the need to calculate and write parity information twice.

Write Performance

Fault Tolerance

RAID 60 arrays can tolerate the failure of two physical disks in each RAID 6 set. The failed disks must be replaced to ensure continued fault tolerance. Otherwise, the two or more working physical disks in the partially degraded RAID 6 set become multiple points of failure for the entire array.

Efficient use of disk capacity

When the minimum eight physical disks are used in a RAID 60 array, 50% of the combined disk capacity (two physical disks per RAID 6 set) is used for redundancy. The capacity efficiency increases as the number of physical disks increases (because only two physical disks are used per RAID 6 set for redundancy irrespective of the number of physical disks in the RAID 6 set).

Automatic rebuild

Available

Minimum number of drives

 

8 

 

Figure 1 describes RAID 60.

Figure 1  RAID 60: Illustration

Note: An Adobe Flash® demonstration of RAID 60 is not provided. RAID 60 incorporates the technique of striping (RAID 0) across multiple RAID 6 arrays. View demonstrations for RAID 0 and RAID 6 for an understanding of how RAID 60 arrays are built.