RAID stands for Redundant Array of Inexpensive/ Independent Disks. There are different RAID levels and the level you choose for your system depends on the amount of storage you require and the way you access your data and several other factors like cost, redundancy etc. Common RAID levels are 0, 1 and 5.
RAID 0
-Data stripping
-Improved performance
-No redundancy
RAID 1
-Mirroring
-Redundant
RAID 5
-Data stripping + evenly distributed parity
-Redundancy + improved performance
-Minimum 3 hard disks required
RAID is mostly used in a production setup or where redundancy and performance is a major concern. It is configured by using RAID controllers. For example, in the case of Dell PowerEdge R710 servers, RAID is configured using PERC (PowerEdge Raid Controller). Press Ctrl+R to access the PERC BIOS Configuration Utility after starting or restarting the PowerEdge server.
