Question: Raid vs Mirroring

BACKGROUND: We are currently looking into the hardware needs for our HP T-500 box running HPUX Release 9.04. The box will initially serve as an Oracle server running the Oracle Financials package but the box will eventually serve as a production box as well. We are a 24x7 company, so uptime is important. Our initial user base will be about 50 growing up to 400+.

PROBLEM: The problem that we are presently faced with is this: Do we want to go with a RAID Level 5 disk array or some form of a disk mirroring system. We plan to use file systems vs raw devices and our downtime window is shrinking.

QUESTION: I am curious as to whether anyone has had any experience or preference to which system would work best. My primary concern lies in terms of reliability, backups, and I/O performance.

Thanks in advance for any input,

Tom Koithan, Merrill Corporation. tkoithan_at_winternet.com Received on Tue Jan 17 1995 - 22:14:19 CET