To RAID-1 or not to RAID-1

[vbportal]

Hi,
I started recently at this company and inherited the following:
ProLiant ML150 server with one 36GB SCSI hard disk.
Hard disk partitioned C:Windows, D:accounting package + data
There is no backup yet.

There are some 40 PCs. Accounting and sales people use the accounting
package (connection to server) and write docs/use excel, otherwise
PC and server usage is not so intensive. Document storage
is not centralised. My idea is to RAID-1 the server and centralise storage of
docs there + introduce USB backup via Acronis TrueImage server for windows.
I bought two 72GB hard disks and am about to purchase the RAID controller.

I was going to copy the partition structure to the new HDs and remove the
36GB. A colleague indicated it would be wasting the RAID card CPU time
mirroring the OS and Windows temporay file all day,better to leave the 36GB,
keep WIN on C: (36GB)
all data on the 72GB HDs (RAID-1)
WIN temp + virtual memory on D: (36GB)

This makes sense but I wanted a solution which would give me hardware fault
tolerance for Windows and the DATA. I would like an opinion

is it such a bad idea to RAID-1 the two new Hds with the partition structure
of the old HD i.e. C:WIN, DATA?


Vjeko

 

[spi200]

Hi

Its not a bad idea at all to RAID your OS, I understand where your friend is comming from, but he is not correct. What would be even better would be to RAID the OS with another cheaper 36Gb and have your data on the 72Gb on another RAID 1 - that way your OS and your data are on seaprate arrays and this would have performance benefits over having both OS, swap and Data all on the same raid set.
So my opinion is to RAID the lot not just the data.

Regards


Dave