RE: [IMail Forum] OT : 2000, 2003 drive configuration

[John Tolmachoff \(Lists\)]

Having more than one controller is better, but even if you only have one controller with 6 drives, and you set up 3 virtual drives using those 6 drives, you are still off loading that work from the OS.   John T eServices For You   -----Original Message----- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Jacques Brouwers Sent: Tuesday, April 05, 2005 9:33 AM To: IMail_Forum@list.ipswitch.com Subject: RE: [IMail Forum] OT : 2000, 2003 drive configuration   Question:  If you only have one RAID controller will this actually speed anything up?  It seems to me that to gain speed you would need separate controllers. Jacques Brouwers   From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of John Tolmachoff (Lists) Sent: Monday, April 04, 2005 11:55 PM To: IMail_Forum@list.ipswitch.com Subject: RE: [IMail Forum] OT : 2000, 2003 drive configuration Mirroring is RAID. RAID1. J   The premise is that in RAID5, you have more resources used to write. In a high write configuration, such as a page file or spool file, database files and to a lesser extent mail boxes, using RAID5 instead of RAID1 will actually cost more in resources. Example, SQL database files are usually on RAID5 because database files are read more than written. However, the transaction logs files are written to more than read and therefore are generally on RAID1 or even RAID1+0. The transaction logs are then committed (written) to the database files in timed chunks instead of in real time.   For lengthy healthy discussions, search the archives as it has been talked about extensively.   So, if I had a server with 6 drive and it was for Imail, I would create 3 mirrored sets (RAID1).   The first set would be for the OS and page partitions. (And source partition if you separate that.) Second set would be for spool and log partitions. Third set would be for mail boxes.   For the second set, if you can use 15K RPM drives, even better.   John T eServices For You   -----Original Message----- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Doug Anderson Sent: Monday, April 04, 2005 7:35 PM To: IMail_Forum@list.ipswitch.com Subject: [IMail Forum] OT : 2000, 2003 drive configuration   Even though this is off topic, I figured I'd ask due to the wealth of knowledge on the board in regards to server configurations.   For 2000 and 2003, if we had 6 drives in a server, what would be a typical installation. In the past, I've done 1 logical under raid 5 and then with the OS, had 2 partitions - 1 for OS and one for data.   Someone brought up the idea of mirroring 2 of the drives for OS and then using raid on the remaining 4 drives.   What is the general consensus in reguards to server drive configurations?