Best HD Config?

SteveS

SteveS

SteveS

Associate
Joined
22 Sep 2006
Posts
328
Location
London
getting a new server for the company, domain server, exchange server, fileserver.

I have been thinking of the best disk config for it. the two optios i have cmoe down to is

a) two smaller disks mirrored for os and exchange install, several larger disks in raid5 for data and exchange db

b) all large disks in raid 5 and partitioned into smaller os/exchange and larger data.

what you think?
 
really? i know people in my last company did this when builing.. (option b)

but i just thought a would have better redudancy...
 
How much storage do you need? Do you have any number of physical disk limitations based on the server model you've chosen?

SteveS said:
getting a new server for the company, domain server, exchange server, fileserver.

I have been thinking of the best disk config for it. the two optios i have cmoe down to is

a) two smaller disks mirrored for os and exchange install, several larger disks in raid5 for data and exchange db

b) all large disks in raid 5 and partitioned into smaller os/exchange and larger data.

what you think?
Click to expand...
 
For another ~£100 you could get an ML370 G5. That has a 8 SFF SAS bays as standard but can take a second HD cage to make space for another 8 SFF SAS drives, so bags of room for the future.
 
No worries - note that if you add a 2nd HD cage you need another SAS controller to run it, but that's probably a good thing from a performance point-of-view.
 
raid 10 for the second array as morfmedia said - assuming you can afford the extra disk/s for the equivalent capacity - better perf and redundancy.
 
Stelly said:
I would say RAID 6 (1+5) but thats me :)

Stelly
Click to expand...

Not benchmarked RAID 5 VS 6 but I would have thought there would be a parity calculation overhead, especially compared to RAID 10. All depends on storage requirements, you'll lose a fair chunk of capacity with RAID6 vs RAID 5 as well.
 
morfmedia said:
Not benchmarked RAID 5 VS 6 but I would have thought there would be a parity calculation overhead, especially compared to RAID 10. All depends on storage requirements, you'll lose a fair chunk of capacity with RAID6 vs RAID 5 as well.
Click to expand...

Yer I suppose your right, but not that it would be that much noticable.

Stelly
 
Save yourself some money and buy 470064-609 instead ;) Same server, just has the optical drive already and will be cheaper.
 
Absolutely option A.

Isolating the OS on physical drives and an array is the only way to go, you have no idea how much of a headache you can get when your OS is on a partition bulked in with data on the same RAID array. Future expansion, hardware migrations etc turn into a nightmare.

Also if you are not using enterprise level backups for Disaster recovery I would highly recommend investing in an extra drive for the OS Mirror. It's "Poor Mans Disaster Recovery" and will save you hours of time doing a fresh rebuild and patching for a tape based restore in an event of a catastrophic hardware failure or god forbid fire.

The idea is this. You build your OS onto the mirror, once done, pull a disk, let the array rebuild onto the spare disk. Every month or on an interval of your choosing, pull the live disk and put in the spare (kept off-site preferably).

If something happens, dump the disk into replacement server (Hardware indifferent ofc) and do a system state/data restore from the latest backup. Job done, environment back up and working in the time it takes to put the disk in, fire her up and pull the data off tape.

For the cost of a single drive, the time saving benefits and peace of mind is a wise investment imo.

Ninja Edit - You will likely be using smaller drives for the mirror, 72GBs I guess? If your installing exchange there, thats fine, but be weary of how much headroom you need for your Exchange stores, and logs. Consider storing them on the data drive.
 
Last edited:
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top Bottom