which RAID solution to use

[holdahl]

I'm installing windows server 2003 on 2 DELL power-edge machines which has 3 disk on 136GB each.
I'll also install sql server 2005 on them.

any suggestions on which RAID solution to use? have been
thinking on using either 0 or 5 but not quite sure...

sH

 

[dberg35]

This might help you decide.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Redundant_array_of_independent_disks

 

[Pav4o]

I suggest RAID 5

 

[pagy]

I'd go with 5 personally, My personal preference would also be to have a 4th disk and assign it as a hot spare.

All you need in this life is ignorance and confidence; then success is sure.
- Mark Twain

 

[LWComputingMVP]

RAID 0 is not an option for any production server. One disk fails, you lose everything - a 3 disk RAID 0 set is 3x more likely to fail than a single, non-RAID disk.

Use RAID 5 or buy more disks and setup a RAID 10/0+1

 

[djtech2k]

RIAD 5 may be your only usable choice. It is the slowest of RAID arrays, but it will give you redundancy and the most disk space.

 

[FROGGYJ]

+1 RAID 5 or 10

FROGGYJ
A+,N+,CST,CNCT,MCP

http://www.EdmontonSportRiderz.com

 

[monsterjta]

Too bad you didn't have another disk in there, then you could have gone with a RAID10 solution. Since you only have 3 disks, RAID5 is your best solution.

MSSQL is I/O intensive, so having your OS/MDF/LDF on the same channel will not be the best for performance. But, at least you can sleep at night knowing that it's striped.

If you spec this server out as being heavy production (application back-end w/200+ users), I would suggest ramping up to dual channel and purchasing more disks to setup the MSSQL server with best practices.

Hope This Helps,

Good Luck!

 

[58sniper]

At least create two partitions so that you can have some safety there. RAID 5 is the best, IMNHO. Typically, I would do something like a 16GB (16384) OS partition, and the rest for a data partition.

But drives are cheap. Start laying the groundwork for adding more drives later and moving the data over.

Pat Richard, MCSE MCSA:Messaging CNA
Microsoft Exchange MVP
Want to know how email works? Read for yourself -

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[technome]

With the number of drives , raid 5.
Raid 5 has been misalign as to performance. The reads are phenomenal with the newer generation raid adapters.

Generally, >80% of accesses are for reads. Benchmarks for raid 5 do not show how raid 5 really performs with writes(if write caching (write back) is enabled and a server is not overloaded, as benchmarks really overload the cache, all of them). Writes on a raid 5 are better in real life then benchmarks show unless you have many users, blitzing the server with requests.

Do not consider raid 0, unless your into Russian Roulette or you really hate your job, and you are considering a career change. Raid 0 will fail with 100% certainty; raid 0 with 3 disks gives you 3x the failure rate of a single disk

Raid 1, has greater safety than Raid 5 but performance is dismal, especially on reads... on the newer adapters, raid 5 out reads raid 1 three to four times (SCSI/SAS).


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