Do I get 4 x 600gb SAS drives or 6 for my new server?

[TwistedHelixis]

Just about to get some quotes to replace our primary school server, and I can't decide how many drives to get. (BTW I have not included the extra hot spare drive in my calculations below)

 

Current storage on the server is 6 x 600gb SAS drives in RAID 10, this gives us 1.8 tb of drive space, but we are only currently using 600gb for or 2 VMs (DC & Data)

 

Now I know you should get enough room to grow but we are actually shrinking, and most of the files on the current server in the Data VM have already been moved to the cloud, so these will not get copied over to the new server.

 

If I get 4 x 600gb drives that will give me 1.2 tb of space. Even using the same space used on the old setup, that would leave me with about 500gb. The host will need some, so lets give that 100gb. That leaves me with about 400gb.

 

But we will need this server for 5 years, and 5 years is a long time, so I have this little voice in my head saying get 2 more 600gb drives.

 

The issues I have with getting an additional 2 drives is a) money, they are not cheap and we may never need the space. b) 4 drives are recommended as the sweet spot when it comes to fault tolerance, any more and the chances go up of a drive failure.

 

Anyone else got any thoughts or pointers. What would you do?

[bald_pig]

Get the 6 drives and use the extra 2 as hot spares?

[BradfordBantam]

What server is it?

 

Having been involved in IT brokerage for 10 years, I know I can still get drives for much older servers than 5 years! Yeah, they may not be new, but decent suppliers will always provide with some warranty.

 

Save your cash and worry about it in 5 years time!