New server setup advice

[djones]

I am just about to begin setting up a new 2008 R2 server to take over from a lone 2003 DC/file server. I plan to reuse the old 2003 server (reinstalled with 2008 R2) to run WSUS/WDS/Inventory/Sophos...

 

I intend to use Hyper-V as host and then have a single (at the moment) 2008 R2 guest. There will (probably - still sorting final specs) be 4x 300Gb SAS drives in RAID5 so what would be a sensible partitioning scheme? My initial thoughts are 50Gb for OS and 500Gb for Data leaving the rest ~250Gb odd for further guest use, testing new client deployments etc.

 

Has anyone found/used/written any useful guides to setting up/using Hyper-V, initial 2008 R2 tips and tweaks, etc ?

 

Dave

[featured_spectre]

Why RAID5??? if one of your drives fails you are screwed and have lost the data on said drive until you find a replacement?

 

RAID10 could be a good option as that way if a drive is destroyed, you replace it and in minutes its back up...

[djones]

Am I wrong then in my understanding of RAID5?

 

I thought RAID5 would mean that you get the benefit of performance, capacity and protection in that if one drive fails the array would continue to operate at the expense of performance. A new drive could be swapped in and the array would rebuild itself restoring performance when complete. No data would be lost except if a second drive failed at the same time.

 

This is what I have always thought so if I'm wrong, it is a damn good job I've not had many drive failures to date!

[featured_spectre]

I had a RAID5 is good and has its uses, however it is a pain should a drive fail. For example, we set up RAID5 on my last server, 1 drive failed and whilst the other drives continued to operate at a slower pace, I had to rebuild the drive in its entirety. The fact that it housed the media studies shared areas was not pleasant, however after 5 hours and a long restore, it got done.

 

However we had the same thing on our new build (using RAID10) and we just popped in a replacement 1TB drive and within 3 minutes the whole drive was rebuilt and we were off and going again.

[djones]

Ok, thanks for that. Unfortunately, I think going for RAID10 will blow the budget as I'd have to up the number or capacity of drives (and therefore cost) considerably to achieve the same overall storage. Restore time versus financial cost...the latter wins again!

[djones]

...I had to rebuild the drive in its entirety.

 

Incidently, I thought the RAID controller did this automatically when you inserted the new drive? Or am I misunderstanding what you are saying?

[featured_spectre]

I thought so too, however it was not the case. It restored the drive so that it could be used (IE restoring folders, NTFS etc) but restoring files was the time consuming part.

[dan400007]

RAID 5 rebuild time (and if the rebuild can be automatically or from Windows) will depend on the the RAID controller in the server.

 

As for using local drives I would highly recommend using IOMeter (or something similar) to test the performance of the drives in the different RAID setups. I say this because if its a cheap RAID controller in the server then RAID 5 will kill the performance of the setup when you start adding more Virtual Machines.

 

In general HyperV is a fairly simple product to get to grips with, the main thing to think about is weather your going to run Windows Server Core or Full. If you're not used to managing a server from the command line / powershell the I would suggest sticking with the Full server install.