Al, I was basically saying that I think 15K drives are the better way to go more so because it simplifies your design, reduces the number of wearable components, etc.
As others have pointed out, this is a guestimate, if your servers are dedicated to additional functions, you will have to consider evaluating specific metrics to make an informed decision. Todd -----Original Message----- From: Al Lilianstrom [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Friday, June 23, 2006 7:49 AM To: [email protected] Subject: Re: [ActiveDir] DC Configuration Myrick, Todd (NIH/CC/DCRI) [E] wrote: > Some of my opinions based on my own research. > > > > 1. I prefer hot swappable hardware RAID 1 for all boot / system > partitions no matter what the role of the server is. To me this > gives the fastest disaster recovery option for situations you are > unsure about with regards to OS updates and single drive > failures. On a side note we used to use three mirrors for our > domain controller setups. 1 for system/boot/syslog, 1 for > transaction logs, and 1 for data. We mirrored this after our > exchange setup, except in Exchange we used RAID 5 arrays to store > the data. > 2. With regards to number of spindles and performance, I discussed > this with someone on the list before (Guido) and people at HP and > we came to the conclusion that with the latest 15K drives you > won't see any tangible performance improvements going with > multiple mirrors unless you DC's service more than 5000 people in > that location where the DC resides. I had a feeling that 15K drives wouldn't buy me much. After some reading last night I'm even more convinced. For our size I think I'll be going with 2 mirror sets and as much memory as we can afford. > 3. Judging from the original posters SMTP information, it looks like > his organization has less than 5000 people in it, so I recommend > his first option. > While my 'organization' has less that 5000 employees we can have from 1-4000 visitors here at any time. With the Accelerator running (as it is now) we'll be crowded for the next 1.5 years. > > Follow-up thoughts looking for group input. > > > > With regards to when is it best to use Software RAID, I have debated > this with several people and I seem to favor this approach in Virtual > Server Environments and using it on the System/Boot Partition for DR > purposes. Another possible use for the software based mirroring might > be to create live copy of server for duplication purposes (personally I > think there are much better approaches out there.) Any thoughts on this? > > > > What Disk type do you all recommend? I currently still stick to the > Basic Disk for the most part. (Unless I want to use software based > fault-tolerance). > We use basic for most for the most part. The only time I use dynamic is when I have to create a large (>5TB) volume on some of the SATA boxes that we have that host some large-ish SQL databases. al -- Al Lilianstrom CD/CSS/CSI [EMAIL PROTECTED] List info : http://www.activedir.org/List.aspx List FAQ : http://www.activedir.org/ListFAQ.aspx List archive: http://www.activedir.org/ml/threads.aspx List info : http://www.activedir.org/List.aspx List FAQ : http://www.activedir.org/ListFAQ.aspx List archive: http://www.activedir.org/ml/threads.aspx
