LukeC Posted June 25, 2012 Posted June 25, 2012 hello, im about to pruchase a new physical domain controller, what woudl people go for Raid 1 or Raid 5, it wont store any data just will be a Global catalog server, DNS, DHCP thanks
tmcd0035 Posted June 25, 2012 Posted June 25, 2012 I generally work to the following rule of thumb - Operating Systems either JBOD or RAID1, Data preferably RAID-5 but sometime RAID-10 if cost is an issue. In this case I'd go RAID-1, personally.
jamesfed Posted June 25, 2012 Posted June 25, 2012 How many disks and at what speed is a thing to think about first.... Otherwise pretty much the same with me as @tmcd0035 - RAID1 for anything that is OS related and then RAID5 for data. If you aren’t using your server to store data (other than your AD) just RAID1 would be fine.
Michael Posted June 25, 2012 Posted June 25, 2012 RAID 1 for OS, RAID 5 for data or RAID 5 for OS and data (partitioned) is how I do it.
broc Posted June 25, 2012 Posted June 25, 2012 (edited) Trying not to hijack the thread, but what would you recommend for a Hyper-V host OS? Our existing ESX hosts are RAID 1, when we move to Hyper-V I am torn between leaving them at RAID 1 or moving to RAID 10? User data & VM OS would be on a SAN so this is purely for the Host OS itself. Edited June 25, 2012 by broc
tmcd0035 Posted June 25, 2012 Posted June 25, 2012 RAID 1 for OS, RAID 5 for data or RAID 5 for OS and data (partitioned) is how I do it. Accepting that every network/need is different - I'd normally argue, with the price of 250Gb hard drives being what they are, I'd sooner a seperate (non-RAID) drive for the OS to partitioning a RAID-5. I think the partitioning would have a (negligable?) impact on data access speeds.
bwestlake Posted June 25, 2012 Posted June 25, 2012 RAID1 for os maybe RAID0 as a dc replacates itself, for data RAID5 or RAID6
tmcd0035 Posted June 25, 2012 Posted June 25, 2012 Trying not to hijack the thread, but what would you recommend for a Hyper-V host OS?. Ours are all RAID-1 (guests are on a RAID-50 NAS). Cant see the OS being hammered enough to justify the extra cost of RAID-10.
SYNACK Posted June 25, 2012 Posted June 25, 2012 Trying not to hijack the thread, but what would you recommend for a Hyper-V host OS? Our existing ESX hosts are RAID 1, when we move to Hyper-V I am torn between leaving them at RAID 1 or moving to RAID 10? User data & VM OS would be on a SAN so this is purely for the Host OS itself. Why not dump the VMs on the SAN to? That way you can use shared storeage if needed. You'll need to have the iSCSI extentions so that the NICs can act as HBAs but this is included with many newer servers and removes the drives entirely from the servers, if you want more speed use the extra money that you were looking at for a 1+0 upgrade to chuck an extra few drives in the SAN in a drive shelf if there is no extra room.
tmcd0035 Posted June 25, 2012 Posted June 25, 2012 RAID1 for os maybe RAID0 as a dc replacates itself, for data RAID5 or RAID6 For a DC I'd see RAID-1 as worth it just so you can try to avoid having to bring up a new DC from the replication. Removing a dead DC from DNS is cumbersome to say the least.
Michael Posted June 25, 2012 Posted June 25, 2012 Accepting that every network/need is different - I'd normally argue, with the price of 250Gb hard drives being what they are, I'd sooner a seperate (non-RAID) drive for the OS to partitioning a RAID-5. I think the partitioning would have a (negligable?) impact on data access speeds. I'd never have a server OS on a non-RAIDed drive personally. There are good reasons why partitioning a RAID5 array is a good idea. Firstly, if you need to re-install the OS or restore from a backup, user data will remain untouched as it's on a different partition. If it was all on the same partition, it would get extremely complicated. Other reasons are for storing WSUS files 20GB+ and image files, which are typically 20-30GB which leads me onto the next point - 2008 R2 backs up whole volumes rather than individual files/folders, however you can restore individual files/folders as required. Partitioning gives me redundancy, but still allows me to organise and backup data in an efficient manner.
SYNACK Posted June 25, 2012 Posted June 25, 2012 2008 R2 backs up whole volumes rather than individual files/folders, however you can restore individual files/folders as required. Partitioning gives me redundancy, but still allows me to organise and backup data in an efficient manner. R2 does have a better backup that can target files and folders and shove them into VHDs, 2008 is limited to drives or predifined stuff like system state only. I still end up using robocopy thanks to the impotence of the new backup tools if at a smaller site.
tmcd0035 Posted June 25, 2012 Posted June 25, 2012 @Michael, lol, I think you missed what I was driving at. I'd sooner have the OS away from the data drives entirely. For a DC I'd use RAID-1 for the OS. For a non-DC, reinstalling an OS on to a blank HDD is no big deal since the data is safely tucked away on the seperate RAID-5 volume. Like I say, using a single RAID-5 volume and partitioning for OS and Data may effect access speads.
Michael Posted June 25, 2012 Posted June 25, 2012 I'd agree, which is why I originally wrote: RAID 1 for OS, RAID 5 for data or RAID 5 for OS and data (partitioned) is how I do it. Three different options, but it all comes down to cost/size of the network too as you also pointed out. I can confirm I've noticed no difference in speeds using a single partitioned RAID5 array. DCs really are not that CPU or memory intensive - plus I've looked at loads of servers (not setup by me) setup in the same/similar fashion. Custom builds and big OEMs. I suppose if speed was an issue, SAS rather than SATA would be the next step.
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