Server Essentials - RAID

[donte10]

I've been setting up quite a few servers with Server 2012 Essentials for small offices this past year and was just curious how others are configuring their Essential servers, specifically the hard drive configurations?

I have another proposal to send out this week for an office of 18 users (with no growth in sight past 25 users). This server will be mainly used as a file server with 1 main industry specific software called Maxwell a software used for project bidding for construction workers. This specific company is currently using 400GB of data space on their current server 2008.

Do you use the traditional setup of two different arrays; RAID 1 for OS, and RAID 5 for DATA?

Or for Server Essential setups do you go with only 1 array; for example 4 drives with a RAID 5 configuration?

RAM vs HDD? I've been contemplating going with 7.2K 3Gb/s SATA hard drives with 16GB Ram. If you had the choice of upgrading ram or hard drives to SAS 10k, what would give me the better performance?

 

[Mokester]

I usually do one large RAID 10. Better write and read speeds. Also I'd upgrade the HDD rather than RAM generally for something like this. If it's only file server and one software, there won't be that much load on the server. You'd probably see better performance with faster read/write times especially for the bidding software as I'm assuming client/server software running on SQL. Also, 16GB...how many sticks is that? check the prices of the RAM you are buying...some of the larger sticks can be had at not much of a price premium leaving you with room for growth.

 

[donte10]

I usually do one large RAID 10. Better write and read speeds. Also I'd upgrade the HDD rather than RAM generally for something like this. If it's only file server and one software, there won't be that much load on the server. You'd probably see better performance with faster read/write times especially for the bidding software as I'm assuming client/server software running on SQL. Also, 16GB...how many sticks is that? check the prices of the RAM you are buying...some of the larger sticks can be had at not much of a price premium leaving you with room for growth.

That's a good thought too... 1 array with RAID 10. Good suggestion. If I decided to upgrade the memory, I was thinking 32GB (not sure how many sticks).

 

[YeOldeStonecat]

For small offices, RAID 1, RAID 1.
For larger offices where I need more performance, RAID 1, RAID 10.

Doing one single RAID 5...and having the two Windows partitions on it..horrible performance. You want to have separate spindles for the OS and DATA volumes.

We stick with SAS, I leave SATA for desktops...or like...1 user offices. Really prefer to stay far far away from SATA in servers...unless you're talking NAS units or something. So yeah I'll take SAS disks over extra RAM any day of the week.

Look at it this way...over a 5 year period, the client does not save money by doing cheap on the server and using SATAs. Because it takes you longer to unbuckle (build) the server. And it takes you longer to do installs and Windows updates on the server...over time, as you maintain it after hours and shove in updates and reboots. Unless you like volunteering your time...the client pays because you have higher bills..takes you longer.

 

[Mokester]

I find the 16GB sticks to not be terribly expensive..better than paying for multiple 4 or 8GB ones. Plus as stated before, for a small premium, (think less than a couple hundred difference) you get the same amount of memory, just more memory slots to upgrade later should the need arise. When you're spending anywhere from 3000-10000 on the server anyway...that's chump change for the added flexibility.

 

[Markverhyden]

I'd make sure that the hardware is up to the task. Those low end machines that ship with Essentials usually have software RAID (fake RAID cards). Get a real machine with a real RAID card.

As far as the config. RAID 10 is a great option and most likely not available on entry level OEM RAID devices. If the demand on the LoB is not that high then I still like RAID 1 for the OS and RAID 5 for the data. But at least 4 drives with one hotswap.

I guess a lot depends on the budget.

 

[donte10]

For small offices, RAID 1, RAID 1.
For larger offices where I need more performance, RAID 1, RAID 10.

Doing one single RAID 5...and having the two Windows partitions on it..horrible performance. You want to have separate spindles for the OS and DATA volumes.

We stick with SAS, I leave SATA for desktops...or like...1 user offices. Really prefer to stay far far away from SATA in servers...unless you're talking NAS units or something. So yeah I'll take SAS disks over extra RAM any day of the week.

Look at it this way...over a 5 year period, the client does not save money by doing cheap on the server and using SATAs. Because it takes you longer to unbuckle (build) the server. And it takes you longer to do installs and Windows updates on the server...over time, as you maintain it after hours and shove in updates and reboots. Unless you like volunteering your time...the client pays because you have higher bills..takes you longer.

What do you consider small office - I would say 25 users (essentials) or less is small.

 

[Mokester]

Depends on the data...is majority of that data static? What is their projected data growth rate? How is the data accessed? For instance, if majority of that data resides in a database, faster disk performance trumps all and Raid 1 and 10 or OBR10 is best for the performance increase...and definitely SAS over SATA....minimum 10K RPM.

Raid 1 and 5 is a leftover of the early days of computing when disks were too expensive to run a full mirrored set. Raid 5 allowed more use of the disks than the 50% penalty incurred by running mirrors. Now that disks are relatively cheap, there is very little argument for a RAID5. Systems with RAID5 are usually leftovers from systems that haven't been upgraded in the past 10+ years or techs still stuck in their old ways who are comfortable with RAID5 and continue to use it.

In general, splitting an array is bad...only exception I make is Raid 1 and 10 when absolute performance is needed...but I've only done that once to date. Majority of my clients are much better off with Raid 10. YMMV

 

[donte10]

This will be a Dell T610 model with a RAID 6i card.

 

[Markverhyden]

I think that's an excellent choice for the hardware foundation if the card is the PERC 6/i with the battery backup.

 

[YeOldeStonecat]

What do you consider small office - I would say 25 users (essentials) or less is small.

<10....more like 2-3 users to a 1/2 dozen. Even for a network of close to 10 I'd be pushing for a RAID 10 on the data volume.