logical drive setup questions with RAID/Windows/Exchange

Hi to all who read this question and thanks for your comments!

We have just received a new server (Dual Xeon, 4Gb RAM and 6x170Gb SAS
drives connected to a RAID card). We will be running Windows 2003 Server R2
+ Exchange 2003 Standard + SQL2000 (move to SQL2005 later once our app
supports it). What would be your recommended RAID setup of the drives to
maximise performance while being as efficient with disk space lost due to
RAIDing?

Considerations (please tell me if they are a good or bad idea):

- Perhaps run one of the SAS drives without RAID to use for the Windows swap
file, shadow copy volumes, print spool and temp files or is this just
wasting space?

- Is it better to have two separate logical RAID drives (eg mirrored for OS,
RAID5 for data) to separate data or set all the drives in RAID 5 and then
partition to separate data?

- where should program files/data for Exchange/SQL be stored for best
performance? I think it would be better if I could keep the Exchange store
on a separate RAID volume to the user data as write performance on our old
server is suffering with Exchange store + data on the same RAID 5 volume,
but that would either mean keeping the Exchange store on the OS drive, or
having to split the 6 drives 3 ways - which only leaves mirroring as an
option!

Note that we have about 70 users all with Exchange but only about 20 SQL
users so Exchnage is much more heavily used. Also, the data files stored are
a variety of Excel/Word/Powerpoint totalling a few hundred Mb, mixed with
large desktop publishing/poster design files (Indesign/Photoshop - 150Gb
total) + many CAD files of varying sizes (20-30Gb total).

Eventually we plan to separate Exchange onto a separate machine but the
budget isnt there yet.





.

Relevant Pages

  • Re: New computer case - 23 bay
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  • Re: Review of new design - Please
    ... "Do I need separate physical disks for each of the above sets?" ... The reason to separate them as a best practice is because of I/O types. ... better perforamance and space with RAID 1+0 than you could with just RAID 1. ... RAID 5 typically incurs a write penalty to update parity across the drives, ...
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  • Re: logical drive setup questions with RAID/Windows/Exchange
    ... drives connected to a RAID card). ... What would be your recommended RAID setup ... - Is it better to have two separate logical RAID drives (eg mirrored ... I think it would be better if I could keep the Exchange ...
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  • Re: HELP with Exchange 2003 RAID
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