For Data, use RAID 0 or RAID 5. For Log, use RAID 1?

  • I need to provide Hardware requirements for

    new Production Database server.

    Currently we have about 15 databases there

    but 6 of them are "Read Only' archives.

    The main application db "commission" is not heavily used.

    Maybe 5-8 simultenious connections,

    about 15 users in total.

    I checked File size, log size and it looks like we need

    about 400 GB space.

    Now i need to specify our "nice to have" options (RAM,CPU)

    and I don't have too much knowledge here.

    SQL Server 2005

    Administrator's Pocket Consultant says

    For Data, use RAID 0 or RAID 5.

    For log, use RAID 1

    What does that mean. What RAID stands for?

  • RAID is redundant array of independent disks. If you don't understand RAID, I'm not sure you're the person to provide hardware requirements. You might want to let them know that this is something you're not familiar with.

    RAID 1 or 10 are preferable for logs and data. If you have $$ or space limitations, R5 can work, but there are good cases against it. (www.baarf.com)

    R0 should not be used for data or logs.

  • Actually, a read-only database might do just fine on RAID-5, since the problem with RAID-5 is the small, frequent writes that OLTP databases do. Log files for read-only databases should be minimal, and shouldn't have any performance bottleneck, so a separate RAID-1 should be fine for them (separate for disaster prevention, not performance). For that matter, you might even be able to get away with a single RAID-6 for read-only files and logs. Haven't tried it, but in theory, it should be okay, I think.

    Any databases with frequent updates/inserts/deletes should be RAID-1/10/01, with logs on a separate array.

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