drive configuration for maximum performance

Using SS2000. We have 14 146G drives that are divided into 2 logical drives
of 7 physical drives each. I want maximum performance. Would a configuration
of 1 logical drive for all 14 physical drives of raid 10 be better? Or is
another configuration better?
Thanks,
Dan D.
I was told by a MS SQL guy at a conference once when I asked that question
this:
OS should be on a RAID 5 drive group of at least 3 drives.
DB should be on a RAID 5 drive group of at least 3 drives.
Logs should be on a RAID 0 mirrored group of two drives.
The two RAID 5 groups are because of the random nature of the data access
and the RAID 0 group because logs are written sequentially. The RAID 5
will give quicker random access and fault tolerance where the mirrored RAID
0 allows for fault tolerance and quicker sequential writes.
Regards,
John
"Dan D." <DanD@.discussions.microsoft.com> wrote in message
news:BFFE2FA1-F222-470E-AED6-0E6C25550F46@.microsoft.com...
> Using SS2000. We have 14 146G drives that are divided into 2 logical
> drives
> of 7 physical drives each. I want maximum performance. Would a
> configuration
> of 1 logical drive for all 14 physical drives of raid 10 be better? Or is
> another configuration better?
> Thanks,
> --
> Dan D.
|||From the research that I've done, using raid 5 versus raid 10 seems to be a
matter of whether you're doing a lot writes or not. For a system that does
more than 10% writes, raid 10 is supposed to be better because it is faster
when doing writes. We do a lot of data manipulation for direct mail files so
we're doing a lot of writes. raid 10 also seems to be more fault tolerant
because you can lose more than one drive in the array and still recover. I
think you can only lose one drive in a raid 5. So, for our situation I'm
reasonably sure that raid 10 is better than raid 5 for the data drives.
I was thinking that putting all 14 drives into one logical drive would give
us a lot more drive heads to go find the data than dividing the drives up
into two logical drives and therefore would be faster.
Thanks for the feedback,
Dan D.
"John J. Hughes II" wrote:

> I was told by a MS SQL guy at a conference once when I asked that question
> this:
> OS should be on a RAID 5 drive group of at least 3 drives.
> DB should be on a RAID 5 drive group of at least 3 drives.
> Logs should be on a RAID 0 mirrored group of two drives.
> The two RAID 5 groups are because of the random nature of the data access
> and the RAID 0 group because logs are written sequentially. The RAID 5
> will give quicker random access and fault tolerance where the mirrored RAID
> 0 allows for fault tolerance and quicker sequential writes.
> Regards,
> John
> "Dan D." <DanD@.discussions.microsoft.com> wrote in message
> news:BFFE2FA1-F222-470E-AED6-0E6C25550F46@.microsoft.com...
>
>
|||RAID 10 is RAID 1 over RAID 0. The RAID 0 would give better throughput and
the RAID 1 mirror would give protection. I would not have a problem with
replacing the RAID 5 with a RAID 10 in the below configuration but I would
still suggest moving the OS and transaction log to two different RAID arrays
to increase performance.
But as they say it is your system, not mine and you are in a better position
to judge which configuration would give you better performance / usability
for your needs.
Regards,
John
"Dan D." <DanD@.discussions.microsoft.com> wrote in message
news:EDBD0576-C037-4EA4-82C1-07AFB8BAB668@.microsoft.com...[vbcol=seagreen]
> From the research that I've done, using raid 5 versus raid 10 seems to be
> a
> matter of whether you're doing a lot writes or not. For a system that does
> more than 10% writes, raid 10 is supposed to be better because it is
> faster
> when doing writes. We do a lot of data manipulation for direct mail files
> so
> we're doing a lot of writes. raid 10 also seems to be more fault tolerant
> because you can lose more than one drive in the array and still recover. I
> think you can only lose one drive in a raid 5. So, for our situation I'm
> reasonably sure that raid 10 is better than raid 5 for the data drives.
> I was thinking that putting all 14 drives into one logical drive would
> give
> us a lot more drive heads to go find the data than dividing the drives up
> into two logical drives and therefore would be faster.
> Thanks for the feedback,
> --
> Dan D.
>
> "John J. Hughes II" wrote:
|||I agree with you on that. I should have been more clear. We already have the
OS on a separate set of drives and the logs on another. I was only asking
about the data drives.
Thanks,
Dan D.
"John J. Hughes II" wrote:

> RAID 10 is RAID 1 over RAID 0. The RAID 0 would give better throughput and
> the RAID 1 mirror would give protection. I would not have a problem with
> replacing the RAID 5 with a RAID 10 in the below configuration but I would
> still suggest moving the OS and transaction log to two different RAID arrays
> to increase performance.
> But as they say it is your system, not mine and you are in a better position
> to judge which configuration would give you better performance / usability
> for your needs.
> Regards,
> John
>
> "Dan D." <DanD@.discussions.microsoft.com> wrote in message
> news:EDBD0576-C037-4EA4-82C1-07AFB8BAB668@.microsoft.com...
>
>