Hi,

What would peoples preference/opinions be on using the following drive RAID
combinations for a SQL 2005 install:

6 x 73G SAS 15K drives (RAID5 or RAID10)
or
12 x 250GB SATA II drives (RAID5 or RAID10)

thanks - J.

John,

I see that your many SATA will give you a lot more storage than your few
SAS. Of course, your numbers depend on your load and your priorities.
(Naturally.) Still, I would not recommend any serious server use SATA
drives.

If you want to check some reviews, you could go here. You can do
head-to-head comparisons for drives (although your particular drives may not
be here) to get a feel, at this site:
http://www.storagereview.com/php/benchmark/bench_sort.php

I run both data and log drives as RAID10. I realize that more spindles are
good, but more slow spindles for drives that are not rated for the same
level of life do not compel me.

Having said all of that, if your SQL Server is not heavily loaded you may do
fine with the slower drives.

RLF

I note that you didn't mention the spidle speed of the SATA II drives. Nor
did you mention the on-disk cache for each. Also, what is the potential
bandwidth of the adapter you will bolt up to these?

--
Kevin G. Boles
Indicium Resources, Inc.
SQL Server MVP
kgboles a earthlink dt net

Why 6 x 72GB vs 12 x 250GB? Is that due to cost considerations?

Linchi

"John Davis" wrote:

Hi Kevin,

I was thinking of using one of these -
http://www.storevault.com/products/hw_s500.html. It doesn't mention the
spindle speed but I'm guessing 7,200 (not sure about on disk cache).

Thanks - J.

The options are:

SQL 2005 with database storage running on Dell 2950 which has 6 drive bays
so would opt for 6 x 73GB RAID10 SAS 15,000rpm drives (don't actually need
masses of storage) or an iSCSI connection for the data files to something
like this http://www.storevault.com/products/hw_s500.html which is sata only
so I increased the number of drives for performance. Was just concerned that
I'd potentially be reducing performce by opting for the iSCSI on SATA.

thanks.

I would think that the net throughput of 12 drives RAID10 would be higher
than 6 drives RAID10 even if the 12 are 7200 and the 6 are 15K rpm. I do
not have a mathematical proof of that statement though (although Linchi can
probably spit the number out off the top of his head! :)

I also think iSCSI can easily handle 12 spindles worth of IO with
appropriate IO path configuration.

--
Kevin G. Boles
Indicium Resources, Inc.
SQL Server MVP
kgboles a earthlink dt net

"John Davis" hotmail.com> wrote in message
news:OXLhhLqtIHA.4492@TK2MSFTNGP02.phx.gbl...

...

I guess the keyword there is "appropriate IO path configuration" as
experience with iSCSI seems to be quite uneven.

Linchi

"TheSQLGuru" wrote:

Hi Linchi,

Thanks for the reply. I assume by "appropriate IO path configuration" you
mean RAID controller card(s) setup? Could you elaborate a bit?

Many thanks.

"Linchi Shea" discussions.microsoft.com> wrote in message
news:FB3AC792-66FB-4E21-A0AD-17953217B9A2@microsoft.com...

Dedicated IO network, full duplex NICs, multiple NICs pathed to appropriate
segments of the drive system, GBe obviously.

Linchi is right - often-times companies that go with iSCSI don't really have
the resources to setup/manage it sufficiently and get suboptimal
performance. Of course, I have yet to see a single client I have done
performance tuning work for get a FC SAN 'right' either - and most are
horrible at it!!

--
Kevin G. Boles
Indicium Resources, Inc.
SQL Server MVP
kgboles a earthlink dt net

"John Davis" hotmail.com> wrote in message
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