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It all depends on your performance, capacity, and fault tolerance requirements. &nbsp;Option 3 will get you the most storage capabilities, and if you choose a good controller and enterprise disks, you should get good performance as well. &nbsp;Another option to consider is adding SSDs for at least some of the storage. &nbsp;They can add a lot of extra performance in a virtualized environment.
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It all depends on your performance, capacity, and fault tolerance requirements.  Option 3 will get you the most storage capabilities, and if you choose a good controller and enterprise disks, you should get good performance as well.  Another option to consider is adding SSDs for at least some of the storage.  They can add a lot of extra performance in a virtualized environment.

DrPing

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Option 3. You will need all the storage you can get for a business use file server. 7.2K Disks will be fine for what you want to achieve, cheaper also.
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Option 3. You will need all the storage you can get for a business use file server. 7.2K Disks will be fine for what you want to achieve, cheaper also.

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I'm trying to configure a new server (dell), but keep going back and forth on the hard drive configuration. I'd like to get the best bang for my buck.<br />
I'm trying to choose between:<br />
1. (2) 10K SAS drives mirrored (RAID1)<br />
2. (4) 7200 NL-SAS (RAID10)<br />
3. (6) 7200 SATA (RAID 10)<br />
<br />
It's just going to be a Hyper-V host for a DC, and file server for a small group (less than 40 users), if that matters. All three configurations are about the same price, a little more storage with the third. Any thoughts or suggestions please.
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I'm trying to configure a new server (dell), but keep going back and forth on the hard drive configuration. I'd like to get the best bang for my buck.
I'm trying to choose between:
1. (2) 10K SAS drives mirrored (RAID1)
2. (4) 7200 NL-SAS (RAID10)
3. (6) 7200 SATA (RAID 10)

It's just going to be a Hyper-V host for a DC, and file server for a small group (less than 40 users), if that matters. All three configurations are about the same price, a little more storage with the third. Any thoughts or suggestions please.

Hard Drive Array Configuration

Servers are computing devices that are similar to desktop computers in that they have the same basic components, but are significantly different in size, configuration and purpose. Servers are usually accessed over a network, and many run unattended, without a computer monitor, input device, audio hardware or USB interfaces. Many servers do not have a graphical user interface (GUI), and are configured and managed remotely. Servers typically include hardware redundancy such as dual power supplies, RAID disk systems, and ECC memory, along with extensive pre-boot memory testing and verification. Critical components might be hot swappable, and to guard against overheating, servers might have more powerful fans or use water cooling.

Server Hardware

Computer data storage, often called storage or memory, is a technology consisting of computer components and recording media used to retain digital data. In addition to local storage devices like CD and DVD readers, hard drives and flash drives, solid state drives can hold enormous amounts of data in a very small device. Cloud services and other new forms of remote storage also add to the capacity of devices and their ability to access more data without building additional data storage into a device.

Storage

Hyper-V is a native hypervisor; it can create virtual machines on x86-64 systems and supersedes Windows Virtual PC as the hardware virtualization component of the client editions of Windows NT. A server computer running Hyper-V can be configured to expose individual virtual machines to one or more networks. Hyper-V Server supports remote access via Remote Desktop Connection. Administration and configuration of the host OS and the guest virtual machines is generally done over the network.

Hyper-V

Storage devices include any device used for storing and retrieving digital information. Hard disk drives (HDDs) use one or more rigid ("hard") rapidly rotating disks (platters) coated with magnetic material. Data is accessed in a random-access manner, meaning that individual blocks of data can be stored or retrieved in any order and not only sequentially. The primary competing technology for secondary storage is flash memory in the form of solid-state drives (SSDs), but HDDs remain the dominant medium for secondary storage due to advantages in price per bit and per-device recording capacity. CD-RW (Compact Disc-ReWritable) is a digital optical disc storage format that allows information to be stored outside the mechanical HDD.