What is the role of a disk array in L3W Storage systems?

The role of a disk array in L3W storage systems is primarily to combine several physical disks into a single storage unit, which enhances both performance and fault tolerance. By aggregating multiple disks, the array can distribute input/output operations across all disks, leading to improved access speeds and higher throughput. This setup is often implemented using techniques such as RAID (Redundant Array of Independent Disks), which not only enhances performance but also provides data redundancy. In the event that one of the disks fails, the information can still be accessed from the remaining disks, which significantly improves data availability and reliability.

While power consumption and user access management are important considerations in a storage system, they are not the primary functions of a disk array. Similarly, automatic backup is a separate function that might use disk arrays for storage but is not a role of the array itself. Thus, the main purpose of a disk array is to optimize both performance and data protection through the combination of multiple disks.