With the limited number of drives, I don't see a problem with that. Except that 3x9 (effective available space since 1 out of 5 is a hotspare, and then 1 out of 4 is taken up for parity) is 27, not 8gigs...so where is the rest of the space?
Are all of the servers configured the same? Eg...are they all 2500's or are you just speaking for the main machine? Also, where are the machines located in relation to you or your IT staff? I ask that because online hot spares, while a Nice Thing, are not always necessary if your staff is around. If you have three servers, all identical, and are placed in your main server location with experienced staff, I would place all of the drives into active RAID5. Then purchase one extra drive, identical to the ones installed. Keep that as a "global" spare. If a drive fails, the servers will let you know...simply remove the bad drive and insert the spare. The chances of having a drive go bad in more than one server at a time is quite improbable. Now, this is ok in your situation where you have limited drives and resources. An ideal situation requires that you separate the OS from the data drives. I always install servers with a mirror OS and then RAID5 data. Eg. We just purchased a Dell 2550 with a PV210 external array. The 2550 will have two 18gb drives, mirrored up. The data will go on 6 36gb drives on the array. Gives us two things: 1) The ability to replace the OS without touching the data drives...simply unplug one of the mirrored drives, upgrade the OS on the one remaining drive, if it works, great, stick in the removed drive and let the mirror rebuild. If it doesn't work, shut down, pull out the drive with the blown OS, stick in the other drive and rebuild the OS with the good drive. Gives us better performance...the OS/swap file, etc, don't like to live on RAID5. It slows them down. Gives more write/read time to the data because the data drives are separate. Unfortunately, you can't really do that with just 5 drives. -----Original Message----- From: Joel Cruz [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]] Sent: Saturday, October 20, 2001 9:37 AM To: NT 2000 Discussions Subject: Doubts about RAID Hi folks! I need your help again. I am installing a WAN with about 300 PC clients, distributed over 20 sites. The main server is a Dell PowerEdge2500 ( a Pentium III 933 MHz, 256 KB cache, 512 MB Ram, five 9.1 GB Ultra3 Hot Swap 10 krpm, a RAID SCSI controller, etc). OS is Windows 2000 Server, and other than Active Directory, DHCP and DNS, the server will run only SendMail, and some clients will have virtual disks to backup their files. There are other two servers, for SQL Server production and for SQL Server development. I never installed RAID, hardly know the theory, then I hired a Windows 2000 expert to install the servers. He decided to configure four 9 GB HD with RAID 5, and leave one as hotspare. The server will have 3 volumes: . volume C with OS ( RAID 5 / 4GB / primary partition) volume D with backup folders and SendMail ( RAID 5 / 4GB / primary partition ) volume E: CDROM What I would like to know : is this the better configuration? is he a true expert? TIA Joel from the middle of the Rain Forest ------ You are subscribed as [EMAIL PROTECTED] Archives: http://www.swynk.com/sitesearch/search.asp To unsubscribe send a blank email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] ------ You are subscribed as [email protected] Archives: http://www.swynk.com/sitesearch/search.asp To unsubscribe send a blank email to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
