Best Practices building virtual disks in iSCSI SAN
My organizations is 125 users and we recently purchased an HP Storageworks iSCSI MSA. Or initial deployement was storage for our file server but we are now looking to use this array for Microsoft Exchange storage (DB and Logs).
Or storage array is currently configured with one virtual disk comprised of 4 disks in RAID 5 array. Our question is the following. In the context of a SAN storage, is it better to make one large array of disks and carve off LUN's from that array? Or is it better to make multiple arrays for specific purposes (e.g. array for Exchange Log files, array for exchange db, array for file server).
It would seem to us that a large array is more efficient and better use of SAN storage; but it also doesn't seem optimized. I am interested on both what is considered best practices and what might be acceptable for an organization our size.
Or storage array is currently configured with one virtual disk comprised of 4 disks in RAID 5 array. Our question is the following. In the context of a SAN storage, is it better to make one large array of disks and carve off LUN's from that array? Or is it better to make multiple arrays for specific purposes (e.g. array for Exchange Log files, array for exchange db, array for file server).
It would seem to us that a large array is more efficient and better use of SAN storage; but it also doesn't seem optimized. I am interested on both what is considered best practices and what might be acceptable for an organization our size.
it is best to make one big array and carve out LUN's. this way you have the ability to determine what server get's what disk space and it is easier to manage.
ASKER
mickeyfan,
In your opinion, how concerned would you be about optimizing block sizes and how the different systems (i.e. a file server versus a database) access and store data?
In your opinion, how concerned would you be about optimizing block sizes and how the different systems (i.e. a file server versus a database) access and store data?
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