Andrew, what's your opinion on RAID6 / RAID DP?
John-AldrichTile-Tools From: Andrew S. Baker [mailto:asbz...@gmail.com] Sent: Thursday, March 11, 2010 4:40 PM To: NT System Admin Issues Subject: Re: Disk configuration in new server Hey, Evan I'm not saying that RAID5 is evil (except when partitioned for the boot drive), but RAID1 performs better, especially in a disk failure situation, and drives are large enough and sufficiently inexpensive that except for lab and testing scenarios, or really small workloads, I avoid it altogether. It works, and given the state of recent hardware, you won't notice it in many instances unless you compare directly with a separate machine. -ASB: http://xeesm.com/AndrewBaker Sent from my Verizon Smartphone _____ From: "Evan Brastow" <ebras...@automatedemblem.com> Date: Thu, 11 Mar 2010 14:45:27 -0500 To: NT System Admin Issues<ntsysadmin@lyris.sunbelt-software.com> Subject: RE: Disk configuration in new server Thank you guys, for all of the replies. I'm a little uncertain, still, because of the following three things: 1) I have actually used RAID 5 on my current server for the last 7 years. three disks, one volume. holding the OS, data and logs, with no issues. (I'm not saying I knew what I was doing when I set it up, okay?) J 2) The book, "Exchange Server 2010 Unleashed" says, "RAID 5 is most commonly used for the data drive because it is a great compromise among performance, storage capacity and redundancy." 3) Frankly, I could use either RAID 5 or RAID 1 for the data. If I get two 500GB drives in RAID 1 for the data drives, I can go for 10 years and not fill that 500GB. But at what performance cost? I need very fast read/search speeds. BUT. 4) ASB doesn't like RAID 5 for data drives, and I Trust in ASB! Have for 10 years! But I've also had this rather passionate love affair with RAID 5 for 10 years. it's never let me down. Brian, I agree I'm going about this backwards, probably, and I've not run the Exchange Storage Calculator. We're a small company. And I mean small. 18 employees. 15 Exchange mailboxes, only 7-8 of which have any real use. A grand total of about 700 valid emails come in a day (the rest are stopped by our Barracuda.) My primary concern is just speed, speed, speed, not so much storage J It feels like my best bet would be RAID 1 for all logical drives, even the data. I'm just not sure that RAID 1 would be faster overall than RAID 5? Evan From: Carl Houseman [mailto:c.house...@gmail.com] Sent: Wednesday, March 10, 2010 4:50 PM To: NT System Admin Issues Subject: RE: Disk configuration in new server OK, I over-interpreted and under-defined that answer... Here's what MS says (italics mine): "RAID (Redundant Array of Independent Disks) is often used to both improve the performance characteristics of individual disks (by striping data across several disks) as well as to provide protection from individual disk failures. With the advancements in Exchange 2010 high availability, RAID is no longer a required component for Exchange 2010 storage design. However, RAID is still an essential piece to Exchange 2010 storage design for stand-alone servers as well as high availability solutions which require either additional performance or greater storage reliability. The table below provides guidance for the common RAID types that can be used with the Exchange 2010 Mailbox server." http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ee832792.aspx Further reading suggests a single server could maintain multiple copies of the Exchange database on a single server's JBODs, but that's got to be more overhead than just RAID 1'ing it. Carl From: Jon Harris [mailto:jk.har...@gmail.com] Sent: Wednesday, March 10, 2010 4:42 PM To: NT System Admin Issues Subject: Re: Disk configuration in new server I would think at the least you would want RAID 1. Jon On Wed, Mar 10, 2010 at 4:39 PM, Carl Houseman <c.house...@gmail.com> wrote: JBOD's. E2010 does its own DR thing, RAID not required. But again, that's just what I've heard/read. Carl From: Evan Brastow [mailto:ebras...@automatedemblem.com] Sent: Wednesday, March 10, 2010 3:55 PM To: NT System Admin Issues Subject: RE: Disk configuration in new server Hi guys, I'm just revisiting this after getting pulled in a few different directions over the past week. Dumb question. if I use RAID 1 on the OS and log volumes, and it's not recommended that I use RAID 5 for the data, what *should* I use for the data? Thanks J Evan From: Erik Goldoff [mailto:egold...@gmail.com] Sent: Wednesday, March 03, 2010 7:31 PM To: NT System Admin Issues Subject: RE: Disk configuration in new server I'd say run mirrors for all volumes except the data (information store) if your IS size is already large ... but best decision will be based on your current disk usage and projected growth. Depending on your backup schedule and traffic volume, your log files may require large storage too. Erik Goldoff IT Consultant Systems, Networks, & Security ' Security is an ongoing process, not a one time event ! ' _____ From: Evan Brastow [mailto:ebras...@automatedemblem.com] Sent: Wednesday, March 03, 2010 4:17 PM To: NT System Admin Issues Subject: Disk configuration in new server Hi guys. I'm looking at this server: http://www.cdw.com/shop/products/default.aspx?EDC=1723415 to be our next Exchange 2010 Enterprise server (currently running 2003 Ent. on 7 year old hardware.) What I'm wondering is, if I wanted to have a separate RAID array for the 1) OS and Exchange 2) Exchange data 3) Exchange logs. then do I need 3 RAID controllers? I've never set up multiple RAID arrays on a server before. Or do I even need to separate them out? Storage is not a big concern, but speed is. Thanks, Evan ~ Finally, powerful endpoint security that ISN'T a resource hog! ~ ~ <http://www.sunbeltsoftware.com/Business/VIPRE-Enterprise/> ~
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