Co-Location Server disk configuration

Five_Star

Five_Star

Five_Star

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Hi,
We’re consolidating our web hosting solutions onto our own dedicated co-located server, but I’m hoping people can offer advice on if we’re going in the right direction with the disk setup.
We’re hoping to virtualises the machine in the following way. All sites would use the one SQL server to store data.

Server2k8 x64 Hyper-v
Server2k8 x64 standard (SQL server 2005)
Server2k8 web edition x4 (dedicated sites)
Server2k8 web edition (shared hosting sites)

We were thinking about 2x146GB RAID 1 for the OS and for data 4x300GB RAID 5 with 1 hot spare using a Dell PERC 6/I RAID controller.
Another option as suggested in a different thread is to go for a RAID 10 setup with 4x300GB disks. What advantage would this offer over the RAID 5 option and can you have a hot spare in a RAID 10 solution?
 
Personally I go for 2x 146gig 15k rpm in raid 1 for the OS and database, and the 4x 300gig drives in raid 5.

The database will be much happier, since there is a fair performance hit when writing to raid 5 and the 15k rpm drives will have a lower access time.

Also do you really need to virtualise so much? Not just the amount you are going to spend on licensing but each instance of svr08 is going to waste ~1.5gigs of ram each, surely theres a better use for all that ram (Id feed it to the database myself).
 
Thanks for the input on the disks, the database is the largest single storage requirement so I'm not too sure how much space we would have to expand in future on the RAID 1 array.

We can squeeze eight disks into the chassis so we could go with
2x146GB RAID 1 (OS)
2x146GB RAID 1 (Database)
4x146GB RAID 5 (other data)

as per the virtualization its for customers paying a lot more for dedicated boxes who are happy with the price, but if you have ideas on a different solution I'd be happy to hear them.

Cheers
 
Look into raid 10 for the OS and DB then.:)

No really, fire up the resource monitor to find out what and how much disk access is really going on, it may be less than you think. I only put the OS on its own disk(s) the disk config is going to change or the software the server is run software developed by people who don't have a clue about the art of buffering.

Oh and the main advantage of raid 10 over raid 5 that with 4x 300gig disks you would only get 600gig with raid 10 whereas you would get 900 on raid 5.

PS if you are going for a Dell 2950iii at al with 2.5" drives, you are limited to 146gb for the time being.
 
Personally I'd consolidate using ESX server, do you have a choice of platform? Hyper V is only just going live now for release and I wouldn't trust it in production until SP1 or a few hotfixes are out....
 
we're fully paid up MS supports here, been testing Hyper-v for a while and happy enough with its performance and price. Plus we have people with the skills who are wanting to learn it and develop as it does.

I did notice that the Dell 2950 servers only offer 146GB right now too :( shame. I think its time to ask our account manager for two quotes either way.

Please feel free to comment on this setup or what would be a good database enabled webserver.

Cheers
 
Update: we went for 2x146GB SAS Raid 1 and 3x300GB SAS Raid 5 with a hot spare, all 15k RPM.
I've been setting up the Hyper-V machines, seems very responsive so far but not tested the Raid 5 partition for speed yet.
 
For database use it really depends whether your DB is heavy on reads or writes. Raid 10 gives much better (circa 20%) write performance than RAID5.
 
Yeah I've noticed its rather slow at copying to the Raid 5 volume, about 30MB/s according to Vista copy info. Thankfully the DB are all all read heavy and updates applied over night.
 
Just go for 6 x 15k SCSI in RAID10 or RAID5. The 450GB drives aren't that much of a premium and if you have a good account manager you'll easily get a third off the advertised price on the website.
 
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