2900 w/ RAID 10 configuration

[PantheraLeo]

Help! I've gotten thrown into this position of IT/Server/UTM/Network Admin Guru because I knew the most about desktop systems at our company. (Of course I didn’t get a raise!) Right now I'm rebuilding servers using any information I can get my hands on.

The newest one is reconfiguring a PowerEdge 2900 to be a RAID 10 file server for our artwork. I'm looking at installing 8 500 GB SATA drives which should give me about 1.8 terabytes of storage w/ total fault tolerance (as long as I don’t loose the same two drives in a mirror).

My questions are these:

What is the best way to set it up? Using a total software raid solution such as VERITAS or a software and hardware solution?

If the answer is Software, is VERITAS the best? It’s mentioned several times in one of my reference books, "Building High Availability Windows Server 2003 Solutions", in the RAID section.

If the answer is a combination (using the W2003 Server Logical Disk Manager & a PERC 5I card) or straight hardware what would be the most recommended PERC 5I card to go with?

Straight hardware seems to be what my references point me to but I wanted to try to get some hands on insight.

Thanks in advance for any help you can lend.

 

[jkupski]

Hardware RAID is superior to software RAID.

However, Dell does not offer a hardware RAID solution for SATA drives in the PE2900. So unless you want to spend the extra cash on SAS drives (this is worth doing anyway, in my opinion--performance is superior, and the drives are more reliable) and are willing to give up some capacity (300GB max per drive) you'll need to use a software RAID config.

 

[PantheraLeo]

jkupski, thanks for the reply. Any recommendations on a Perc 5i card?

I talked to two different server tech's at Dell and they walked me through how to convert the PE2900 to a SATA compatable server. I know the SAS drives are better and all but at tripple the cost I didnt have the budget for it.

What would be the best way to set this up? I've thought up several possibilities and have them laid out below. Any advice would be greatly appreciated.

I'm looking at eight drives in an eight bay server. Four drives in each RAID 0 with a RAID 1 between them. Each drive is 500GB.

Is it possible to partition say 5GB from each drive and create it into my system drive and have the other 495GB from each drive available for the RAID 0?

Essentially my OS would be on a RAID 0 also. Is this possible to do? I dont think it is but clarification would be great.

Or should I only pull 10GB from one drive for my OS and then just loose 10GB from each of the other three drives to keep them even for the RAID 0?

Or worst case scenario, do I have to give up two drive bays to run my OS on and be stuck w/ only around 1.5TB of space?

This is the first one I have ever set up like this so sorry if I'm throwing a lot of questions out at once.

 

[NickFerrar]

The C13 disk option lets you use the 8 internal bays for the RAID-10 and the 2 flexbay slots for the a separate RAID-1. I've not used drives in flexbays myself but presumably these can be O/S disks.

I'd think long and hard about using RAID-10 though, it's a huge overhead in terms of wasted disks (i.e. expensive) and you might be able to get away with RAID-5 + hot spare.