Smart RAID ARRAYS 6i CONFIG
Hi All,
I've a Hp with 6x72 GB hard drives, 4GB RAM, Dual Processors. I wanna make sure everything is properly configured before I get the ball rolliing. First and foremost, I need a quick disaster recovery scheme and a good fault tolerance. The system will have Exchange, VMWare and AD and might serve as a file print/server ?? too. What's the best practice and the most acceptable way to configure this baby?
thanks for your help on this matter.
firemouse
Raid 5
Hardly the greatest of answers above.
Are you putting everything in to VMWARE? If so, then I would probably look at three RAID 1 mirrors. Then spread the data across each one.
Exchange needs to have at least two arrays for optimum performance (one for the logs and one for the database). The OS and applications can live with the logs quite happily, although I usually put the logs on to a different partition of the same disk.
With regards to DR, the simple rule is that the longer you can be without the system the cheaper it will be. The only way to get fast DR is going to be a second system operating on a cluster of some description, possibly using ESX (the full version) and some of its toys.
Simon.
Are you putting everything in to VMWARE? If so, then I would probably look at three RAID 1 mirrors. Then spread the data across each one.
Exchange needs to have at least two arrays for optimum performance (one for the logs and one for the database). The OS and applications can live with the logs quite happily, although I usually put the logs on to a different partition of the same disk.
With regards to DR, the simple rule is that the longer you can be without the system the cheaper it will be. The only way to get fast DR is going to be a second system operating on a cluster of some description, possibly using ESX (the full version) and some of its toys.
Simon.
The below link would give you detailed information about different Raid levels and the advantages. Baed on your requirement you can opt :
http://www.acnc.com/04_01_00.html
http://www.acnc.com/04_01_00.html
Mestha says you need 2 arrays for exchange, so you'll need another one for AD/GC, another one for VMware and another one for file/print. That's not going to happen with 6 disks.
The seperate arrays for logs/data is more a data seperation thing than for performance, of you lose the data disks you still have backup and up to date logs. If you can afford to lose a days mail then you can mix logs and data even though it's not best practice.
Since you haven't got enough disks for all those seperate arrays I would make 1 RAID 10 out of the 6 disks and then carve it up into several logical disks. With a Smart Array controller you can have several logical disks on the same spindles and you can even have differing RAID levels and stripe sizes on them. So you could go RAID 10 for OS, RAID 5 for data, RAID 10 for transaction logs, etc...
The seperate arrays for logs/data is more a data seperation thing than for performance, of you lose the data disks you still have backup and up to date logs. If you can afford to lose a days mail then you can mix logs and data even though it's not best practice.
Since you haven't got enough disks for all those seperate arrays I would make 1 RAID 10 out of the 6 disks and then carve it up into several logical disks. With a Smart Array controller you can have several logical disks on the same spindles and you can even have differing RAID levels and stripe sizes on them. So you could go RAID 10 for OS, RAID 5 for data, RAID 10 for transaction logs, etc...
ASKER
andyalder:
I'm looking into your suggestions but not fully familiar with RAID 10 enviroment. It looks good and needs a second look given the load on the server. Anything else you might have thought of?
ASKER CERTIFIED SOLUTION
membership
This solution is only available to members.
To access this solution, you must be a member of Experts Exchange.
ASKER
Great ideas and good learning tool.