Netgear RD5D (ReadyDATA Disk Packs) – ReadyDATA Disk Packs (SATA/NL-SAS/SAS/SSD) Quick Setup Guide

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Optimize Performance on a ReadyDATA System
5
 Volume Performance and Configuration on ReadyDATA Platforms
Introduction
This guide was developed to help you decide which RAID type and hard disk drives (HDDs) 
to implement in a ReadyDATA system to achieve the best performance on a SAN or NAS 
volume with support for redundancy. In addition, this guide includes procedures that describe 
how to create a volume, a secure LUN, and a share on a ReadyDATA system.
The three characteristics of a storage configuration are capacity, performance, and 
redundancy. In any configuration, you can select only two of these three characteristics. 
NETGEAR recommends that you always select redundancy to protect your data. Therefore, 
the critical factor in a ReadyDATA configuration is to determine the correct balance between 
capacity and performance. The purpose of this guide is to help you quantify that decision and 
ensure that ReadyDATA users are able to align their configuration with the performance and 
capacity requirements of their environment.
In this guide, throughput performance is measured in MB/s for drag and drop (D&D) 
operations. Read and write performance is measured in input/output operations per second 
(IOPS) for random and sequential operations.
The recommendations that are summarized in the next section are explained and illustrated 
throughout this guide.
Summary of Recommendations
The HDDs that NETGEAR offers with ReadyDATA systems differ in capacity, performance, 
and price. To determine the type and number of HDDs for a ReadyDATA system, first 
consider the level of performance that is required, then determine the RAID configuration that 
you will use, and finally consider the usable capacity of the ReadyDATA system. Some 
network environments require high performance volumes, while for other environments, 
capacity is most important. The combination of the selected RAID type and HDDs determines 
the performance and capacity of a volume.
Recommendations for RAID types and HDDs
NETGEAR recommends the following combinations of RAID types and HDDs:
High performance. RAID 10 volume that consists entirely of SSD or SAS drives.
Intermediate performance. RAID 5+0 or RAID 6+0 volume that consists entirely of 
SATA drives or that consists of a hybrid configuration with SATA spindle drives and 
SATA
  SDD drives.
Moderate performance. RAID 5 volume that consists entirely of SATA drives.
Low performance. RAID 6 volume that consists entirely of SATA drives.