September 1995 / BYTE Lab Product Report

Hands-On Testing: 16 Fast, Reliable RAID Subsystems A Pillar of Reliability	If network server downtime has you singing the blues, the disk array subsystems tested here will keep you and your organization up and running - by Michele Guy
Best Overall Disk Arrays Weighting for Best Overall Disk Arrays Disk Arrays A Plethora of Arrays Digital StorageWorks RAID Array 230 Subsystem Digital StorageWorks RAID Array 230 Subsystem How Error Correction Works Error Detection: Bit by Bit	Each of the 16 disk arrays we tested, with a few minor exceptions, consisted of a case enclosing an array of five half-height 2-GB drives, an array controller board or comparable hardware, a power supply and fan, and a configuration utility and LCD panel th at lets you select the RAID level and make other array configuration selections.
Best for Database Servers Digital Storageworks RAID Array 230 Subsystem Digital StorageWorks RAID Array 230 Subsystem	Database servers are the computer workhorses of many organizations.
File Servers With RAID File Server Performance	If you're in the market for a new file server a nd a disk array, you might consider a file server with a built-in array.
How We Tested RAID Advisory Board For more information on the RAID Advisory Board, contact:	We invited each vendor to supply a disk array subsystem with five drives that have a total capacity of 10 to 12 GB, configured as a RAID 5 array.
Best for Audio/Video Digital StorageWorks RAID Array 230 Subsystem Digital StorageWorks RAID Array 230 Subsystem	The sound and video files used in multimedia applications tend to be large, gobbling up disk storage and placing heavy demands on disk I/O.
Software RAID Solutions A Highly Capable RAIDing Party	Although the focus of our tests was hardware-based RAID (i.e., subsystems that use a dedicated RAID controller), if you've already invested in storage and don't have $10,000 or so to spend on a RAID subsystem, there are many software applications on the market that let you configure your existing disk storage as a RAID array.
Honorable Mentions Artecon Keeps Stacking Up Reasons to Buy Clariion C1300 and StorageTek Nordique	Artecon's line of Lynx products offers what it calls "100 Percent Invest ment Protection.
More On the RAID Front Where to Find On The Levels Helpful Hints	We weren't able to test the following products, but they are worth mentioning: Ciprico's 6900 Series of disk arrays are the first such products to use the UltraSCSI interface, which can transfer data at a maximum rate of 40 MBps.

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