A server technician is deploying a server with eight hard drives requiring RAID configuration for fault tolerance. Which RAID level allows for two drive failures while minimizing overhead?

A server technician is deploying a server with eight hard drives requiring RAID configuration for fault tolerance. Which RAID level allows for two drive failures while minimizing overhead?

• A. RAID 1
• B. RAID 5
• C. RAID 6
• D. RAID 10

Answer: (C)

RAID 6 is the appropriate choice for a server that needs to tolerate two drive failures while minimizing overhead. This RAID level uses dual parity, which allows for the rebuilding of data even if two drives fail. In RAID 6, data is striped across multiple disks with additional parity information distributed across the drives. This means that it can continue to function normally even if up to two drives experience a failure, offering a higher level of fault tolerance compared to other RAID configurations. Additionally, while RAID 5 provides single parity, which means it can only handle one drive failure, RAID 10 (which combines mirroring and striping) offers redundancy but requires a minimum of four drives to effectively manage two drive failures without losing data, leading to higher overhead as well. RAID 1 offers mirroring, which doubles the storage requirement for redundancy, thus also not aligning with the needs stated in the question. Therefore, RAID 6 strikes the optimal balance for this scenario—enabling the system to sustain two concurrent drive failures while maintaining efficient use of storage.

RAID 6 is the appropriate choice for a server that needs to tolerate two drive failures while minimizing overhead. This RAID level uses dual parity, which allows for the rebuilding of data even if two drives fail.

In RAID 6, data is striped across multiple disks with additional parity information distributed across the drives. This means that it can continue to function normally even if up to two drives experience a failure, offering a higher level of fault tolerance compared to other RAID configurations.

Additionally, while RAID 5 provides single parity, which means it can only handle one drive failure, RAID 10 (which combines mirroring and striping) offers redundancy but requires a minimum of four drives to effectively manage two drive failures without losing data, leading to higher overhead as well. RAID 1 offers mirroring, which doubles the storage requirement for redundancy, thus also not aligning with the needs stated in the question.

Therefore, RAID 6 strikes the optimal balance for this scenario—enabling the system to sustain two concurrent drive failures while maintaining efficient use of storage.