Thanks! The machine will have the VMWare windows-based management software (it will _NOT_ be an ESX host!), and once built should not have that much disk I/O (or so I'm naive enough to believe).
Looking about in the Dell site (including manuals), it does not appear that a PERC was even an option on the PE-850. Somebody might have made a 3rd party card, or someone might possibly have pushed a PERC from another system into that cramped little expansion area. If one drive fails, can the mirror be broken, or must one replace the failed disk and then break the mirror, or is one pretty much stuck with the software RAID 1 once it's created? Thanks again.. -- richard Bill Songstad <[email protected]> wrote on 10/08/2009 11:01:19 AM: > A software mirror creates a mirror and that will protect you from a > single disk failure. That is a certainly better than nothing at all > if redundancy is your goal. > > A couple of things to keep in mind though, a windows software mirror > will have a read/wite performance cost that you might notice if you > are doing huge file copies or disk to disk backups to that drive. > Too much activity, and the write operations could trip. That can > cause a system crash or file corruption which is worse than nothing > at all. You really should evaluate your server disk load before > deciding on a software raid. > > The worst thing though, in my opinion is the way windows handles > disk signatures in this case. It is imparative that you never > change disk order in the event of a failed mirror. If your primary > goes down, you must rebuild the new disk as the primary. You cannot > simply move the secondary to the primary slot and boot. Also you > cannot take the secondary out and drop it in identicle hardware and > have it boot as a test machine. The mirror has to exist, even if > broken, in the right order. > > All that said, I have one server running software raid, and I want > to change it to hardware raid because it does disk to disk backups > and sometimes they fail on me. So although I think it is better > than nothing, I still hate it. > > Bill > On Thu, Oct 8, 2009 at 8:37 AM, <[email protected]> wrote: > > Greetings! > > I pulled a PE-850 out of storage to re-build. It will be running > Windows 2003 SP2. Its sticker said two SATA drives... > > It turns out it lacks a PERC (Dell RAID controller). Given that > each disk has more than adequate space for both a system partition > and the data partition (for its intended use), what is the consensus... > > Is the Microsoft "software RAID", to mirror the disks in a quasi > RAID1, better than nothing, the equivalent of nothing, or worse than nothing? > > Thanks! > -- > Richard D. McClary > Systems Administrator, Information Technology Group > > ASPCA® > 1717 S. Philo Rd, Ste 36 > Urbana, IL 61802 > > [email protected] > > P: 217-337-9761 > C: 217-417-1182 > F: 217-337-9761 > www.aspca.org > > The information contained in this e-mail, and any attachments > hereto, is from The American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals® > (ASPCA®) and is intended only for use by the addressee(s) named > herein and may contain legally privileged and/or confidential > information. If you are not the intended recipient of this e-mail, > you are hereby notified that any dissemination, distribution, > copying or use of the contents of this e-mail, and any attachments > hereto, is strictly prohibited. If you have received this e-mail in > error, please immediately notify me by reply email and permanently > delete the original and any copy of this e-mail and any printout thereof. > > > > > > ~ Finally, powerful endpoint security that ISN'T a resource hog! ~ ~ <http://www.sunbeltsoftware.com/Business/VIPRE-Enterprise/> ~
