Thanks for the advice all!
Let me add to the scenario as I left this part out .... I will be doing hardware RAID and I am willing to purchase additional drives as I have space for 5 more. So, spend my money if you need to :-) Aaron ________________________________ From: Bob Fronk [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Wednesday, April 09, 2008 9:33 AM To: NT System Admin Issues Subject: RE: Domain Controller HD setup If this is all you have to work with then you need to decide if redundancy (Raid) is important or if performance and space is important. Mirroring the OS on the 73GBs is probably the best choice just for the sake of keeping the machine running if an HD fails. It is not much space and you will probably want to move your Exchange store to one of the other drives - but you will lose redundancy. So make sure you have a good backup plan. I think if I was forced to do what you need to do, I would mirror the 73GBs for the OS. Keep BES on the OS side if you can. Mirror two of the 146GBs for the Exchange Store, and use the last 146GB for file shares. But I would also have one heck of a backup plan. An alternative is to mirror the 73GBs for the OS and Raid 5 the 146GBs, but you will sacrifice space and performance, especially with SATA drives. But you will gain some redundancy. One final thought. You don't say if the controller will let you hardware RAID or if you plan on using software RAID. My advice is stay away from Software RAID. Bob Fronk From: Aaron T. Rohyans [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Wednesday, April 09, 2008 9:08 AM To: NT System Admin Issues Subject: Domain Controller HD setup Ok folks - question time... Being the "just good enough to be dangerous" type at anything other than Cisco, I thought I would pose this question to the group for some insight. I am in the process of building our new DC. We are a small shop of about 75 employees, so we host AD, Exchange, File Sharing, and BlackBerry Server off of this one server. My question is... how would you guys setup your hard drives in this bad boy for optimal results (primarily for Exchange)? Right now, from the factory it came with 2 x 73Gb SATA and 3 x 146Gb SATA in no RAID. I was thinking of mirroring the 73Gb HDs together for the OS install, but after that I'm not sure what would be best. We have roughly 80Gb of crap that we'll need to store for File Sharing. Any thoughts? Thanks all! Aaron This email and any attached files are confidential and intended solely for the intended recipient(s). If you are not the named recipient you should not read, distribute, copy or alter this email. Any views or opinions expressed in this email are those of the author and do not represent those of the Davis H. Elliot Company . Warning: Although precautions have been taken to make sure no viruses are present in this email, the company cannot accept responsibility for any loss or damage that arise from the use of this email or attachments. ~ Upgrade to Next Generation Antispam/Antivirus with Ninja! ~ ~ <http://www.sunbelt-software.com/SunbeltMessagingNinja.cfm> ~
