: Preferred disk raid config when using SQL Server 2005

Hello all,
If you are planning on installing SQL Server 2005 on a WIndows 2003 SP1
server, is there a "preferred" disk configuration that gives redundancy
and fast performance? I was going to go hardware raid 5, but I fear
slow performance under heavy load. Any suggestions or ideas? Is there
a SQL Server best practice for this?
Thank you in advance for your help, ideas, and/or suggestions!
- MikeListoff wrote:
> Hello all,
> If you are planning on installing SQL Server 2005 on a WIndows 2003 SP1
> server, is there a "preferred" disk configuration that gives redundancy
> and fast performance? I was going to go hardware raid 5, but I fear
> slow performance under heavy load. Any suggestions or ideas? Is there
> a SQL Server best practice for this?
> Thank you in advance for your help, ideas, and/or suggestions!
> - Mike
>
Mike,
There are a lot of different opinions on this subject, but generally
it's best practice to seperate database files, logfiles and OS
files/tempdb on different disk arrays.
Depending on your load and application, it can be worth putting tempdb
on it's own array as well, but I'd say that in many cases it will be ok
to have tempdb together with the OS. Furthermore you could also consider
putting your swap file somewhere different from the OS drive, but in
most cases I don't think it will be worth the effort.
When it comes to RAID, there're also many different opinions, but again
I think that most people will agree that an ok setup will be to put you
OS on RAID 1, Databasefiles on RAID 5 and logfiles on RAID 1 (or 1+0).
This will be a decent setup in most cases. If you have enough
disks/money, you could put you databasefiles on a RAID 10 which in some
situations will perform better than RAID 5.
Bottomline is that you gain the most by ensuring that you split OS,
database file and logfile on physical different units (disks) and then
avoiding RAID 5 for your logfiles. What ever you do after that in terms
of RAID configuration, arrays on different controllers etc. will give
you "slightly" better performance, but might be to little to be noticed
by your users.
Last, but not least, you should also consider where you put you backup
files. Best of all you put them on their own array - both from a
performance and safety point of view. IF you only plan to do backup once
a day or so, it might not matter much in terms of performance, but if
you do logfile backup every 15 minutes on a heavy loaded server, it
might make a difference.
HTH
Regards
Steen|||Wow! That makes a lot of sense and helps out a lot! Thank you guys
for your help! -Mike