bobmclaren (3/16/2010)
I have been provided a server that is maxxed out at 6 disks. When deciding how to arrange the disks, which is the lesser of two evils?A) Two LUNs, slow performance -- C: drive is mirrored (2 disks), D: drive is RAID5 (4 disks). OS and Log files on C:, data on D:
B) One LUN, faster performance -- C: drive RAID5 (6 disks) with OS, log files and data together.
I ask this because I chose option A long ago, and I have since read several articles (and even a paragraph in my SQL 2005 admin book) stating that a 4 disk RAID5 array is an atrocity and should never be used in a production environment.
Since my disk IO performance on the D: drive is sub-par, I am tempted to gut the box and go for option B. But then I would be committing the ultimate sin of putting my log files on the same disk as my data files.
Never put log files with anything else. Fast log flushes are absolutely critical to SQL Server. Log I/O is predominantly sequential in nature, and therefore is best placed on RAID 1. With six disks, my guess would be:
LUN 0: 2 disks RAID 1 for the OS.
LUN 1: 2 disks RAID 1 for the log.
LUN 2: 2 disks RAID 1 for everything else.
or
LUN 0: 2 disk RAID 1 for the log
LUN 1: 4 disk RAID 5 for everything else.
Possibly the best you can do within the limits you have - not too many options with 2 disk LUNs in particular. Ideally, you would have a dedicated LUN for tempdb too. There is nothing wrong with RAID 5/6.
So much depends on information not yet provided though: the purpose of the database server, reliability and performance requirements, the size of the disks, number of controllers, and so on, and so on.
Paul
Paul White
SQLPerformance.com
SQLkiwi blog
@SQL_Kiwi