Here are some general rules on disk striping:
For maximum performance, the individual disks in a striped file system should be spread out across several disk controllers. But be careful not to saturate a disk controller with too many disks. Typically, most SCSI machines can handle 2–3 disks per controller. See your hardware documentation for more information.
Do not put disks on the same controller as slower devices, such as tape drives or CD-ROMs. This slows down the disk controller.
Allocate 4 disks per server CPU in the stripe.
The individual disks must be identical devices. This means they must be the same size, have the same format, and often be the same brand. If the layouts differ, the size of the smallest one is often used and other disk space is wasted. Also, the speed of the slowest disk is often used.
In general, disks used for file striping should not be used for any other purpose. For example, do not use a file striped disk as a swap partition.
Never use the disk containing the root file system as part of a striped device.
Use raw partitions for maximum performance.
In general, you should use disk striping whenever possible.
For the best results
when loading data, dump the data to a flat file located on a striped
disk and then read the data into Sybase IQ with the LOAD
TABLE command.
