Storage Monkeys

There is a lot of talk about the performance, but for an EQL it depends on what you are trying to do. For read performance, both RAID6 and RAID50 perform the same. RAID50 has a capacity advantage, while RAID6 offers better protection. As for write performance, RAID50 performs better because of the stripped disks. The question I'm not really sure about is "how much better?"

The EQL controller is fast, and in a real-world configuraiton you probalby wouldn't notice a difference. What you really need to ask yourself is "Do I care about losing capacity to gain a marginal probability of protection?" In a RAID50 you technically can lose 2 disks at once as long as the disks aren't in the same RAID group. The main selling point of RAID6 is that you are protected from a disk failure during a re-build. With large RAID configuraitons this is where RAID6 looks attractive. With EQL the RAID50 is broken up into several RAID5 groups, so your rebuild times are a lot faster than with RAID6.

Hope this helps answer your question.

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My config: 3 Dell EQL PS5000 Arrays
-PS5000XV - RAID10
-PS5000X - RAID50
-PS5000E - RAID5