A high performance video rendering farm needs maximum performance. All final input, output, and other important data is stored externally on a Storage Area Network. Which of the following RAID levels

RAID 0, or striping, distributes data across all disks in the array, allowing for parallel read and write operations that significantly boost performance. Since the question specifies a need for "maximum performance" and notes that "important data is stored externally on a Storage Area Network," the lack of redundancy in RAID 0 is acceptable, making it the best option for raw speed.

RAID 1 (mirroring) provides excellent redundancy and read performance but does not offer the same level of combined read/write performance increase as striping across multiple disks.

RAID 4 uses a dedicated parity disk, which creates a write bottleneck, hindering the "maximum performance" requirement, and it has largely been superseded by RAID 5.

RAID 5 uses distributed parity, which provides redundancy and good performance, but the parity calculations introduce overhead that prevents it from achieving the absolute "maximum performance" of RAID 0.