Windows + RAID 5 = BAD results so far

george_walker

george_walker

george_walker

Associate
Joined
19 Jul 2009
Posts
1
I am trying to set up a small server using the following components:

AMD Phenom ii 955 Black Edition CPU
Asus M4A88D-V EVO/USB 3 Motherboard
Sapphire 5830 Video Card
Asus Xonar DX sound card
3 Western Digital Caviar Black 1tb Hard Drives in RAID 5
Stacker 831 Case
Corsair 650W HX PSU
4gb Kingston Hyper X 1600 Mhz DDR3

I am trying to get a triple boot with Server 2008 R2, Windows 7 Proffessional, and Ubuntu.

I firstly am encuring problems when trying to Windows Server as neither it or Ubuntu is recognising my RAID Array which I set to 1.9tb, but I can install it on one drive no problem and I have not yet purchased Windows 7 which I intend to do soon. How can I get Windows Server to install on a RAID 5 Array. Secondly may I ask your opinion on my selection of components as I want it for Visual Studio C++ a home server and for gaming. THirdly would I be able to get a triple boot from the RAID 5 array. Fourthy what software would allow me to use a triple boot as well. Finally do you think with this selection of components it is worth buying after market coolers for everything as at the moment I am using a Zalman CNPS 9500a and although being better than the stock cooler is not cooling it well enough in my opinion are there any that are better or do you think i would be better to go to water through something like an ALC domino or a corsair H50.
 
I would have thought it best to install the operating systems on a drive outside the array on another disk. Keeping an image of them on the RAID 5. Though not having the OS on the RAID 5 you wouldn't get the extra disk performance from the RAID 5.

If it is a dedicated server you could swap that 5830 for an SSD and put the operating systems on that.
 
You'll need to give it drivers during Windows setup for it to see the array. Using RAID5 for the OS isn't a great idea as the write speeds will be poor.
 
Read speeds are excellent on RAID5 and is well suited for storage - especially for stuff you don't need to change often such as media. OS spends just as much time writing very small files as it does reading from them, so you will get a performance hit.

You will also likely be using on-board RAID, which more than likely means it is firmware/software RAID. This does not perform as well as a dedicted RAID card [which has its own CPU etc for managing the IO].

I ran RAID5 on my own server up until today. I used my 2TB array for backups and media. However, upgraded the hardware [i7 woo!] and basically lost the array as it was motherboard-based. I have read you can recover on-board RAID if the new mobo has the same chipset, but I simply couldn't be bothered! :p

As for the triple-boot, you shouldn't need any special software. From my own experience, Ubuntu never had trouble seeing my Windows installations and creating a correct GRUB/boot loader.

May I ask why you need triple boot? Would it not be much simpler to run Ubuntu and Windows 7 inside a VM on Server 2008? I regularly run VMs running Windows 7 and other OS for testing purposes.
 
I find it incredible that someone can afford a copy of server2008r2 just to have it lying around on a triple boot, and not making full use of it running a server 100% of the time. Lucky bloke!
 
Chances are you need to get the driver for your RAID controller added to the windows setup when it starts - it should then find it without any problems.

I've installed Windows on Raid 5, but only on 5 disk setups not 3. If given the option I'd definately go for a Raid 0 for the OS rather than a 3 disk raid 5. You won't get any performance boost on a 3 disk raid 5 and as it's only 3 disk you don't really have much in the way of protection for the logical drives in case of a physical disk failure.

Corsair H50 - great cooler although it can take up a bit of space and the flexi-pipes aren't long enough to reposition at the front or bottom right of most cases. I don't regret getting one, but I do wish my case was a little larger to accomodate it as I had to remove a fan guard from the bottom of the PSU to fit it in! :)
 
Hikari Kisugi said:
I find it incredible that someone can afford a copy of server2008r2 just to have it lying around on a triple boot, and not making full use of it running a server 100% of the time. Lucky bloke!
Click to expand...

It's unlikely he's paid retail for it, there are a number of legitimate ways of obtaining MS products -

MSDNAA (free)
Dreamspark (or whatever it's called now) (free)
Technet (£250-450 dependant on level)
MSDN (think the OS pack was about £400 last time i checked)

Or it could be the 90 day trial.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top Bottom