hard disk recommendations for SBS2008

[PaulGillespie]

Hi guys,

I'm writing this in the hope to open discussions on hard disk configurations and to see what other IT pros who look after a lot of SBS setups do. I've only done 3 SBS2008s and I always err on the side of caution when picking the hardware so most of my experience is on about 20 SBS2003s. I'm going to be doing about 3 more SBS2008s in the next 3-4 months so now's the time to get other opinions.

So here goes:

SATA... I only ever use SATA drives if the client has 5 users or less. I'll install a RAID 1 (always hardware!). That gives me between 2 and 4 free slots to install more drives if the client needs more storage space in the future.

I do notice a big performance difference between SATA raid 1 and SAS RAID 1 on SBS2003.

For medium sized SBS installs of around 10 users, i'll use a SAS RAID1 array.

For large SBS installs af around 20-40 users I'll have a SAS RAID1 for the OS and Exchange and another RAID 1 for the clients data.

These configs are for your average clients, you'll always have some clients who require something a little faster due to LOB apps or only using SATA due to cost implications. I'm not concerned with these ones as they are special cases, i'm interested in your average clients and hard disk setups.

Anyone use a RAID 10 SATA or SAS for the whole thing? what's the performance like? Would be interested to know your standard disk setups.

Cheers!

Paul

 

[mufka]

I have question related to all this. I have a new SBS 2008 server with 3 SAS 146GB drives in a RAID5. What is the best practice for partitioning the disk? Leave it as one C: drive or make a second partition. My intention is to put all user data on a NAS. The only thing I intend to store on the SBS server is the mail store.

 

[PaulGillespie]

How many users do you have?

Personally I wouldn't use a RAID 5 for an SBS unless it was for a seperate data volume.

Exchange doesn't perform well on a RAID 5, RAID 1 or 10 is better. If I were you, i'd get another disk and set it up as a RAID 10.

Regarding partitioning, recently i've been using a 100GB C drive, a 25 Gig D drive for the swap file (the size is dependant on the amount of RAM you have. Having a dedicated partition supposedly increases performance as the swap file dos not suffer from fragmetation) and a Large E drive for shared data.

I set up a few SBS2003's with just single partitions. These were big partitions and were unlikely to be filled up. The reason for this is I have seen too many SBS servers with small partitions that have caused problems. Mt serevrs are monitored so we know if the disks are filling up at a fast rate and if we need to increase storage. Everyone has different strategies on this subject I have found. Would be interesting to find out what others do.

I'll quite often leave exchange on the C drive as it can help if there is issues with the other partitions/drives.

Why the NAS for shared data? Can't see any benefits only downsides to be honest.

 

[mufka]

I have about 30 users. I've never had a problem with Exchange on a RAID5. In fact, I think that all that I've done (@50) have been on RAID5. It's been a few years since I've been doing this type of work so I wanted to see what the latest wisdom is. I'm using the NAS for disk based backup and it seems like a good place for user data too while taking some load off the Exchange server.