Re: Disk partitioning question
- From: "John Vollman" <nospam@xxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Fri, 8 Jul 2005 18:00:24 -0500
SG,
Too right. Doesn't everyone buy HP servers?
It does start to look a little weird and cluttered to have what appears to
be multiple partitions in Disk Manager all acting as one volume.
John
"SuperGumby [SBS MVP]" <not@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
news:enZc0ywgFHA.1244@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
>I gotta point out though:
>
> depending on the controller John's RAID5 may or not yet be a drive
> available to the OS.
>
> A hardware RAID Volume may exist without any RAID Drives on it. (again, I
> stress, this depends on the controller) Adding spindles may increase the
> defined size of the RAID Volume but the increase in space is not yet
> apparent to the OS, either the existing RAID Drives must be adjusted or
> additional RAID Drives created, at which time the change becomes visible
> to the OS.
>
> Some controllers (a Compaq comes to mind) allow you to connect 3*36GB
> spindles and define a 500GB RAID5 Volume. Of course, only 72GB is
> available to be assigned as RAID Drives. If you add spindles to the set
> the usable space for RAID Drives increases and you may even adjust the
> size of the available RAID Drives, or create additional ones. It is at
> this point that we start talking about what 'drives' appear as available
> to the OS and how they may be created as Windows partitions and/or
> volumes.
>
> "John Vollman" <nospam@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
> news:upZhRdwgFHA.3656@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
>> To continue with SuperGumby's brain dump:
>>
>> Creating a single hardware based RAID 5 using all disks is not the
>> highest performing configuration for the OS, Exchange or SQL but is
>> generally the best tradeoff between performance, reliability and ease of
>> management. This single array will show up as Disk 0 in Windows Disk
>> Manager. Creating a C: drive partition of 20GB for the OS and apps and a
>> data partion with the rest of the drive will allow you to reformat and
>> reinstall the OS and apps if the @#$! hits the fan without messing with
>> your data. All of the SBS applications allow you to move their
>> respective data stores to another location. So you can install Exchange
>> and SQL on the C drive but then move the stores, logs and mail pickup
>> directories to the data drive. This does take a lot of time/effort so
>> you could just install Exchange and SQL onto the data drive. You want to
>> be carefull with leaving Exchange, ISA and SQL data on the C drive as
>> their log files will fill up your C drive if you don't keep an eye on
>> them.
>>
>> The nice thing about doing it this way is if you ever get tight on space
>> you can add drives to the RAID array to use for data. When you add a new
>> drive to the RAID, you do this throught the array management utility
>> during POST or a software interface, the drive will show up in Disk
>> Manager as unpartitioned space. You can extend the last partion on Disk
>> 0, your data partition, onto this new space. This is really easy if you
>> convert your Disk 0 to a dynamic volume.
>>
>> This by no means is an ideal configuration if you have a busy system.
>> And in fact is contrary to everything you will read from Microsoft
>> regarding the deployment of Exchange and SQL. But for the average SBS it
>> will do quite nicely.
>>
>> And since simplicity is a halmark of the SBS product you should KISS.
>>
>>
>> John Vollman
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> "SuperGumby [SBS MVP]" <not@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
>> news:%23QruKWvgFHA.3540@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
>>> terminology is a kicker on this one, let me see if I can explain why.
>>> and keep in mind that it depends on the RAID controller.
>>>
>>> Take a number of drives and connect them to a RAID controller, let's be
>>> ridiculous and use 10 HDD's (herewith called 'spindles').
>>>
>>> One choice you could make would be to implement a single RAID Volume,
>>> all 10 spindles RAID5, let's say. At this point you do not have any
>>> Windows drives, partitions or volumes.
>>> The RAID Volume can then be divided into RAID Drives. These will appear
>>> as blank disks to windows.
>>> On some controllers a RAID Volume and RAID Drive are the same thing.
>>> (Particularly on cheap nasty IDE/SATA RAID, which should not be used on
>>> primary servers).
>>> Lets take our single RAID Volume and divide it into 6 RAID Drives, just
>>> for fun. :-)
>>>
>>> We can now use Windows to do stuff to the blank drives.
>>> On the first RAID Drive we're going to install the OS, then software
>>> mirror it to the 2nd RAID Drive. SO, we use Windows, after install, to
>>> make them 'dynamic' and create a single Windows software RAID 1 volume
>>> betwixt the two.
>>> We're also severely paranoid about our DATA so we're going to take the
>>> other four RAID Drives and create a Windows software RAID 5 set (volume)
>>> out of them.
>>> We don't actually need to use all the space on each RAID Drive for our
>>> windows volumes, so let's get even more tricky, let's throw some more
>>> numbers into the mix.
>>>
>>> Our 10 spindles are 36GB SCSI drives, so our hardware RAID5 Volume is
>>> 324GB, equally divided into 6 hardware RAID Drives, so each appears to
>>> the OS as a 54GB drive. We want no more than 20GB for our OS so
>>> Windows/drive0 is divided into 20GB OS and rest, and is software
>>> mirrored to Windows/drive1. The DATA partition takes the remaining space
>>> from both these and available space on the other four Windows drives for
>>> a 6*34 RAID5 set (usable 170GB) and we're left with 4*20GB for a Windows
>>> software RAID0 volume for our swap file and temp stuff (usable 80GB).
>>>
>>> Is this setup silly? In relation to SBS it's probably about as silly as
>>> you can get, but HECK, there's a lot of SBS installers out there doing
>>> stuff just as STUPID and charging people for it. (yes, /cynic_mode_on
>>> today). In an enterprise environment this could actually make sense, but
>>> would probably involve multiple hardware RAID Volumes.
>>>
>>> TIME PASSES, and, as expected, we run out of room. WELL, there's room on
>>> that SCSI bus for a couple more spindles, let's add four 36's.
>>>
>>> At first, nothing happens. The spindles appear as additional items to
>>> the RAID controller and that's IT. Windows is not aware of them.
>>> (depending on the controller) we could:
>>> a) create another hardware RAID Volume
>>> b) incorporate the spindles into the existing hardware RAID Volume
>>> let's incorporate!!!!
>>>
>>> SO, we do our tricky thing which takes anything from a few minutes to
>>> many days and suddenly our hardware RAID Volume is 468GB.
>>> More trickiness and we create additional hardware RAID Drives, suffering
>>> from a severe attack of sensibility we create two additional hardware
>>> RAID Drives of the same size as our existing set, 54GB. Does Windows
>>> have any more space??? NO, it has another couple of blank drives to play
>>> with. We then need to use some form of DOS/Windows drive manipluation
>>> (Partition/Server Magic comes to mind) to adjust our Windows
>>> partitions/volumes to use the additional space.
>>>
>>> Project your 3-5yr data growth as best you can.
>>> Implement a single hardware RAID5 volume of sufficient size to hold your
>>> 20GB OS + projected DATA.
>>> Add a hotspare spindle.
>>>
>>>
>>> "Nikki" <Nikki@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
>>> news:8E5BF8A2-FFF4-40BB-B3D4-2A747C2FB661@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
>>>> Hi !
>>>> I am installing a new SBS 03 server which will come with hardware RAID5
>>>> disk
>>>> space. Shall I create partitions or volumes ? I was planning to create
>>>> 3
>>>> areas - one for system, one for exchange, one for users data. Also, I
>>>> planned
>>>> not to use the whole space but to leave free space to extend
>>>> partitions/volumes - can I do that on the fly?- when I need to. Is
>>>> that a
>>>> good idea?
>>>> Thanks!!
>>>>
>>>> --
>>>> Nikki It Admin
>>>
>>>
>>
>>
>
>
.
- References:
- Disk partitioning question
- From: Nikki
- Re: Disk partitioning question
- From: SuperGumby [SBS MVP]
- Re: Disk partitioning question
- From: SuperGumby [SBS MVP]
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