New Server setup - quick advice.....

[FragglePete]

Hi all,

 

Just secured a 'returned' server at a superb price which is a little overkill really (384Gb of RAM!!!! ), but it's going to replace 4 ageing hosts on to one box so it'll be worth it. The storage currently consists of 6 x 996Gb SSD 12Gbps along with 10 x 4Tb HDD 7.2k 12Gbp SAS - which will allow me to sit the 'fast' VMs (eg. SIMS, etc) and the 'small' VMs (DC, SMTP Relay, Internal IIS, etc, etc) on the SSD array using RAID10, and the file shares will sit on the other array on the spinning rust also at RAID10. Unfortunately. no BOSS controller on it which would have been nice to sit the OS on, so having to use two of the SSDs at RAID1 which seems a bit of waste. The chassis does accommodate an additional 2 x 3.5 drives internally so I'm tempting to get a couple of fast HDD 15K 300Gb drive and stick the OS on that, or shall I just stick to the original plan. Re-seller has given me a price for the two drives which is affordable, but getting hold of two Enterprise SSDs extra may be out of reach.

 

What do you think? Stick the OS on the SSDs, take the hit on the storage (won't be major issue) and have stupidly fast OS (Going to be Hyper-V), or get the additional drives?

 

I appreciate some comments will be what about just sticking stuff in the cloud, which we are doing but small steps are required at our place.

 

Thanks in advance.

Pete

Edited October 8, 2019 by FragglePete

[ShellfishClive]

To be honest with that much storage sticking it on the SSDs would be fine, in all likely hood the room that the OS takes up will never be taken up by anything else anyway, unless you have a mountain of data. Seems like your best option in my opinion.

 

The OCD in me is telling you to get two dedicated drives for the OS though but it's really not needed!

[Norphy]

If the storage controller supports the disks in HBA mode rather than in RAID, I’d see about setting up storage spaces and seeing if you can take advantage of automated storage tiering. That way, you can have one big volume and have the OS automatically put stuff where it’s best going.

[PotNoodleTech]

To be honest they days of needed 2 x separate drives for the O/S are long over as it doesnt take long to install an O/S from scratch, everything is virtualised, your VMs are device agnostic, and disk config / raid array agnostic. Create one big partition out of the 6 x 996Gb and install the OS on that and then add the VMS onto the C drive. That way you get superfast SSD O/S disks and superfast SSD VM disks without wasting any space.

 

Frankly I'd have (and do have) all my file shares on SSD array too as whats the point of purposefully showing down your file starage capability just to use the provided mechanical disks? Flog them and spend the cash on SSDs.