Raid - Best Practices
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HI guys
When provisioning new servers whats todays best practice? Previously I would use RAID1 and have the OS drive mirror across 2 drives, then the same with Data storage D drive.I read a great post a long time ago about not using RAID and just get as many disks you can budget for and create one big raid...Or just bunch all the disks together and create seperate partitions for the c drive and then the d drive - is that still good practice?
I'd about to replace an old creaking server for small business (only 10 users). Was wondering how best to build it and welcomed thoughts.
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It seems the going consensus is one big RAID10 (OBR10) with platter based drives and RAID5 with SSD's.
In certain cases and depending on the size of your data, pricing for SSD's with RAID5 is close if not cheaper than OBR10 with SAS drives.
Side Note - Are you virtualizing these servers? Virtualization opens up many doors even for single physical server offices.
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Yes, we'll have a Hypervisor and on there, will create 2x VMs (one DC and one File Server)
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If the server has cables for it, I will drop a standard SATA drive in there for the OS and then use the entire RAID array as data.
A lot of them don't though, so I just make OBR5/10 and create partitions/volumes in the Hypervisor OS setup.
Installing the Hypervisor to a small partition/volume and the rest being data space.
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There isn't only one best practice. It always depends on your needs (the best practice is... always evaluate your needs.)
But the standard starting point if you can't decide is OBR10. That's the safe bet. Safe, fast, and known costs.
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@joel said in Raid - Best Practices:
When provisioning new servers whats todays best practice? Previously I would use RAID1 and have the OS drive mirror across 2 drives, then the same with Data storage D drive.
best practice is no OS on the physical box, hypervisor only.
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To further this. I would vote to install the hypervisor on USB flash drive or SD card, if available.
Then all HDD or SSD storage would be the datastore.
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@joel said in Raid - Best Practices:
g raid...Or just bunch all the disks together and create seperate partitions for the c drive and then the d drive - is that still go
with an office that small - I ask - do you even need a server? Do you need local storage at all? can you go all cloud based? or just use a local NAS for storage and cloud for the rest?
