A number of users are indicating that access to a network file server is responding very slowly when reading or writing to the share. The server administrator notes that a drive has failed in a…

Question

Options

• AAdd a drive to the array, but do not configure it as a hot spare.
• BAdd an additional hard drive, and convert the volume to a RAID 6 configuration.
• CAdd an additional hard drive, and convert the volume to a RAID 10 configuration.
• DAdd a drive to the array, and configure it as a cold spare.

• A
  23% (9)
• B
  56% (22)
• C
  5% (2)
• D
  15% (6)

Explanation

Converting to RAID 6 is the best long-term solution. RAID 5 uses single parity and can only tolerate one drive failure - when that happens, it enters a degraded state where every read requires parity recalculation, causing the severe slowdown users experienced. RAID 6 uses dual distributed parity, allowing it to survive two simultaneous drive failures. Critically, if only one drive fails in a RAID 6 array, the array is degraded but still fully redundant and functional, reducing both the urgency and the I/O penalty of the degraded state. Options A and D (adding a drive without hot spare or as a cold spare) still require manual intervention and would still leave RAID 5's single-parity vulnerability intact. Option C (RAID 10) requires an even number of drives and sacrifices 50% capacity for mirroring, and does not provide the same degraded-state performance advantage as RAID 6 for a sequential read/write workload.

No community discussion yet for this question.