atari37 Posted August 15, 2007 Author Share Posted August 15, 2007 I'm also not privy to the amount of data you're talking about either. Not enough storage? I think 900GB is plenty for what they use it for. I believe they are only using about 300GB which span from 5 years ago.I wasn't saying that RAID5 wouldn't provide enough storage. Quite the contrary actually. RAID10 will provide less storage space so I didn't know if you made your decision based on the amount of data that was going to be put on the array. If they're "only" using 300GB I still have to recommend a RAID10 configuration, which will give you 600GB of space. My only concern is that if they're doing a lot of file writes that RAID5 would hurt performance. RAID5 is really only good if you're doing a lot of file reads. While RAID10 is fast for both reads and writes.Thanks...I really appreciate your input...I will talk to the boss and see what he wants to do. I'm sure he'll be all kinds of confused after I setup a RAID 10 and all he saw was 600GB instead of the 1.2TB he purchased. Thanks again. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
nmX.Memnoch Posted August 16, 2007 Share Posted August 16, 2007 Just print out the thread and let him read through all of the information. RAID isn't about how much the drives are worth, it's about how much your data is worth to you. The more your data is worth, the more you'll spend on a good RAID configuration. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
atari37 Posted October 24, 2007 Author Share Posted October 24, 2007 Just print out the thread and let him read through all of the information. RAID isn't about how much the drives are worth, it's about how much your data is worth to you. The more your data is worth, the more you'll spend on a good RAID configuration. Is it possible to add an additional drive to an already configured raid 5 file system? I have 3 disk (300GB each) and I'm about to do a raid 5 configuration, I was wondering if I could add a 4th drive to give me 900GB of storage space in the near future. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
nmX.Memnoch Posted October 25, 2007 Share Posted October 25, 2007 Some controllers will let you do it and some won't. The unfortunate thing is that you'd have to then extend the partition within Windows. To do this you have to convert the drive to a Dynamic drive...something I recommend against because they can be difficult to recover if you have to reinstall the OS.I assume you're taking backups of all the data? What I generally do when I'm adding a drive to an array (or upgrading all of the drives in an array) is make a 1-for-1 backup*, recreate the array with the new drive (or upgraded drives) and then copy everything back.Honestly, since this is going to be a new setup, your best bet is to just plan for the future and add the 4th drive now. When doing server configurations I always try to plan for the future as much as possible. I generally tend to get 3-5 years of production use out of my servers, after which they move to a development environment for 1-2 years.* For a 1-to-1 backup I generally just Ghost the partition. This keeps all file permissions as well as the drive signature so Windows will just give it the same drive letter. You also won't have to worry about recreating Shares if you do it that way. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
cluberti Posted November 2, 2007 Share Posted November 2, 2007 Thanks...I really appreciate your input...I will talk to the boss and see what he wants to do. I'm sure he'll be all kinds of confused after I setup a RAID 10 and all he saw was 600GB instead of the 1.2TB he purchased.One other thing to note that isn't RAID-related, but it is related to large volumes - assuming the Windows server hosting this volume is an x86 server, 900+GB of storage will start to consume large amounts of kernel paged pool due to prototype PTE tracking files and folders on the volume, as well as MFT and volume bitmap and folder bitmap cache size, which are all allocated out of kernel paged pool. Especially on large volumes where VSS snapshots are enabled, you can easily run your box out of paged and nonpaged pool by attaching volumes that large - if you think this volume may fill over 500GB or so in the future, especially if you want to enable VSS (and you probably do, it really is a boon to have users able to restore their own files!), consider strongly installing Windows 2003 x64 on the server rather than x86 if the hardware is x64. Just a side-note admins don't think about before putting multi-hundred gigabyte and terabyte arrays on x86 boxes... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
nmX.Memnoch Posted November 2, 2007 Share Posted November 2, 2007 Ok, you just made up my mind about something I've been thinking about for a while now. I do have a server with just such a configuration...as a matter of fact it has a 600GB array, a 1.7TB external array and two 1.8TB external arrays. The three external arrays are used as backup storage for all of my other servers...and routinely sit with about 1.5-1.6TB of data on each of them. And yes, the server is running 32-bit Server 2003 (won't support 2003 x64). I do have another server that's running Server 2003 R2 x64 that I've been thinking about moving the three external arrays to. It looks like my decision has been made...I'll be moving them next weekend. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
cluberti Posted November 3, 2007 Share Posted November 3, 2007 Hehe - always glad to be of service, even when I don't mean to . Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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