Re: [ActiveDir] OT: Drive Partitioning

[Marc Zukerman]

John,   First thing I do is run the AD Sizer tool downloaded for free from MS. That'll tell you how big your Active Directory will be approximately. Always build for growth through the life cycle of the machine obviously.   If you want to limit the amount of space for the OS, you can still get mirroring. Within the PERC utility, you can take the first two drives and set up a smaller container for the OS (8 GB). The rest of the two drives (10GB) can then be mirrored for AD.   I'd then stripe the rest on the PERC in three separate containers: One for your logs, one for sysvol (including FRS) and one for your pagefile.   Keeping in mind that the pagefile is fixed and you can't fill up your OS, AD and log partitions, you can then appropriate space as necessary.   The advantage of this is you can take advantage of the stripe read performance with the containers that need it. You can also avoid the overhead of any OS-imparted RAID. The disadvantage is that you'd lose 36GB out of a total 90GB. If your AD isn't going to be that large, that shouldn't be a problem.   Marc Zukerman Senior Network Engineer Greenwich Technology Partners   ----- Original Message ----- From: John Witasick To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Friday, February 21, 2003 11:00 AM Subject: [ActiveDir] OT: Drive Partitioning Hey gang!   My group and I are having a somewhat lengthy discussion about drive partitioning and Windows 2000, and I'd like to solicit some input from the group.   The scenario:   We have a Dell server with a PERC card and 5 - 18GB drives.  All drives are configured in a RAID5 array w/ hot spare.  The discussion seems to revolve around the best way to split up this array for use with Windows 2000.  Some have the school of thought that logical drives should be created from within the PERC utility, while others believe that the logical drives should be created from within Windows.   We all understand that the MS best practice would be to create a mirror for the OS, and then RAID5 for everything else.  This is one of our smaller servers; others have 36GB and 72GB drives.  I'd just assume not dedicate 2- 18, 36, or 72 GB drives to the operating system.   So, assuming that mirroring is out, do we partition on the PERC card, or partition within Windows?  And, what are the pros and cons of each?   Thanks much.   John Witasick Project Manager - Windows Networking Services Group