Which RAID Level for the OS Logical? 2

[JohnBates]

Hi,

I'm configuring the ServeRAID controller on a new xSeries.

Will have 2 logical drives under 1 array.

Plan to us RAID 5 for the app & data logical drive.

But for the other logical - where only the WIndows 2000 Server operating system will reside.... should I use RAID 0 or RAID 5 or ?


any thoughts?
Thanks, John

 

[jsavely]

I would go with the Raid-5.
Raid level 0 will give you more space, but you have no redundancy, That is if a drive should fail you will lose data on Raid-0. Thus taking your operating system down.
Remember you must have at least 3 physical drives or more for Raid-5

 

[Petje]

Optimal would be 5 disks....

2 for a raid 1 (mirror) for the OS
3 for a raid 5 for your data...



Petje
A+, MCP, MCSE on NT4.0 and windows 2000 with messaging specialty and CCEA

 

[catorze]

Since you're using hardware RAID, I would configure one large RAID 5 logical drive for the entire server and define a hot spare (then partition your disk for the OS if you want). If you follow Petje's recommendation, you will only have the equivalent of 3 disks. The OS will install on hardware RAID 5 and give you better performance with more disks. You can get the same disk space from creating a 4-disk RAID 5 logical drive with a hot spare and have better performance. Also, you can still have access to your data with two failed drives, although not at the same time.