Advice on RAID?

[talksr]

Those cards will do nicely.

 

 

48Gb for 3 hosts ?... or do you mean 3 VM's?

 

Glad they look ok, sorry I meant 3 VMs

[talksr]

Get a reasonably quick one (x2)... maybe like the type you would use with an SLR camera.

 

TBH it doesnt really matter. Once Esxi is loaded it sits in RAM pretty much anyway. The only thing that will be affected is Esxi updates and boot time.

 

 

Incidentally... how much RAM have you got in that server?

 

 

 

EDIT:

 

Oh p.s...

 

 

When you get that image installed, post back on here. I've (we've) got some tips that will save you a lot of time and effort. VMWares documentation is pretty cr@p and phone support takes days if you don't pay for premium support.

 

@mikkydoos good news, I have the software installed. Would be really grateful if you could give me any tips to save time.

 

[JackCPickup]

VMware will tell in no uncertain terms its not Linux based.

 

Not sure what exactly you was referring to, if ESXi then yes it doesn't share any code with the Linux kernel at all.

[AlanD]

...I don’t think there is a universal answer to the OP’s question....

 

There is no best solution....and it depends how it’s going to be used......write times might not matter....and with only 4 disks the chance of a double disk failure is extremely low, so I’d think twice before making it a RAID 10 or 6....If it’s for a fast SQL server the amount of RAM might be critical...if it’s lots of classes accessing the same files...you might want some form of SSD cache accelerator....and for general server use...I would have been reluctant to go with 7200 rpm drives because access times can important and 15k drives can liven up a server...

[mikkydoos]

@mikkydoos good news, I have the software installed. Would be really grateful if you could give me any tips to save time.

 

[ATTACH=CONFIG]49122[/ATTACH]

 

 

First of all you've got an issue there with your storage by the look of it. That should be showing x Gb of disk space.

 

Have you set up your RAID correctly. Check your RAID bios.

[talksr]

Hi there, just getting round to sorting the RAID out. It doesn't look like RAID 10 will be an option.

These are the options it gives me:

 

[Norphy]

RAID 1+0 is the same as RAID 10.

[talksr]

RAID 1+0 is the same as RAID 10.

 

Thank you. Just raided it now!

[talksr]

Hi guys.

I configured the RAID 1+0 and have reinstalled the VMware software.

 

This is what I am getting when I view the storage on the server. Does this look right?

 

I have 4 x 2gTB SAS DS drives.

Will try and get an array screenshot tomorrow.

[Norphy]

3.64tb is about right.

 

You have to remember that a hard drive manufacturer counts a megabyte as 1,000kb while most operating systems counts a megabyte as 1,024kb. By the time you get to the tb level, 3.64tb will equal about 4,000,000,000,000 bytes.