Need storage advice for my company's server

J

Jay_S

Weaksauce
Joined
Jan 9, 2008
Messages
90
Folks,

Need storage advice for my company's server.

I'm looking at this HP ML150. Newegg has it for $799, which seems like an awesome price.

We're upgrading from a ML330 G3
  • single 2.8GHz Xeon
  • 3GB RAM
  • HP SmartArray 641 w/32MB cache
  • three 36.4GB 10k RPM U320SCSI drives, RAID5

We have less than 10 employees. Usage is
  1. Windows file & print server, AD controller
  2. shared storage
  3. SQL database server for our ERP software

Currently our RAID5 array is partitioned into system & data partitions. I realize this is not optimal.

The HP ML150 G6 comes with a single 250GB SATA drive, and has space for three more.

I've been thinking that:
1) We should keep the system and data drives physically separate
2) We should keep the stock 250GB SATA drive as the system disk, and
3) Add 2 15k RPM drives as a RAID1 mirror for our data.

I *believe* I could accomplish all of this with the built-in B110i SATA raid controller. And I *believe* disk performance would be equal or better to our current setup.

Does this sound OK? Stupid?

Aside from the 3-year warranty and additional expandability options, is there any other compelling reason I should be looking at new ML300 series servers? We bought our current ML330 because it was on sale and cheaper than similar lesser servers.
 
There is a big hole in your proposal, no RAID 1 on the system disk.

I'd suggest using the 15k drives as a RAID 1 array for everything if it will fit, and use the 250gb SATA drive as non-critical storage.

Our company is set up with a pair of RAID 1 disks (15k SCSI) with one partition with everything on it, and a eSATA drive that we have SyncToy make a daily copy to. (We also have an LTO-2 tape backup and I take the tape off-site daily.)
 
Thanks for the reply.

Everything will EASILY fit on a single mirror. The smallest 15k SAS drive available through HP is 150GB, and our server currently uses only about half of its available 73GB.

I though about the OS mirror. I'm chatting right now with HP about this.

Turns out that the embedded sata controller can't do hardware raid of any kind. Even RAID1 would be software raid. And it can't do SAS either.

So I'd need a 2nd controller. HP's P212/ZM does raid 0/1/10, and does four internal SAS ports.

** So what do you think the performance hit is of having the OS and data on the same physical drive(s)?

My boss says we have to buy TODAY. Which sucks because I don't make good decisions without TONS of research...
 
Another question is this:

Will two 15k RPM drives in RAID1 equal the performance of three 10k RPM drives in RAID5? I'd think they would, give higher areal density and faster rotational speeds.
 
With less than 10 employees you wont be stressing the disks very hard unless everyone is on it at the same time constantly. Definitely use raid 1 for the os/storage, though I would suggest raid 5 for the database(database corruption sucks) but not a big deal if your doing a daily backup.
 
Thanks for the reply AcidBurn-

But why raid 5 for the database? What does raid level have to do with db corruption? Raid 5 means I need a new, expensive controller. Plus, I don't want Raid 5 unless there's compelling evidence that it'll SMOKE a mirrored pair of 15k RPM SAS drives.

I've been going off this Oracle storage guide, which recommends raid 10. Since our usage is low, I'm thinking we'll be OK without the nested striping of raid 10. Just mirroring instead.
 
Anyone know who the OEM is for Dell's current 15k RPM 3.5" SAS drives?

We've settled on a 4-disk Raid 10, in a Dell T310 (Lynnfield Xeon!). Dell's HDD prices are crazy high.

The 146GB 15k is $340 each from Dell. Provantage has 146GB Seagate 15k.6 for $193. 5-year warranty on the Cheetah, only 3-year on the Dell.

The math makes it look like a no-brainer to me:

Four drives from Dell = $1360 total
Five drives from Provantage = $965 total

(I'd buy a spare Cheetah since they don't have Dell's next-day replacement)
 
Last time I ordered a Dell workstation, we received Fujitsu drives.
 
Be careful when ordering drives that are not from the manufacturer, They have and still do firmware lock drives so the only drives that work on their server are genuine HP/Dell drives.

Also, any issues with the server and they will not give you support if the problem is related to the hard disks in any way.
 
Thanks all. After talking with my boss, we're going to go with the Dell drives for reduced hassle.

We've settled on this config:

Dell T310 tower (link).
  • Intel Xeon X3430, 2.4 GHz, 8M Cache. This is the new "Lynnfield" Xeon. It should be faster than the entry-level X5500 Xeons due to the included "turbo" feature. The X3430's base clock is 2.4 GHz, but it will "turbo up" to 2.8GHz. Since our ERP database (freaking interbase) doesn't scale well across CPUs, the "turbo" feature should be a good fit for us. Downside is no dual-socket, but that's not really a negative for us.
  • 8GB Memory (4x2GB), 1066MHz, Dual Ranked UDIMM
  • PERC6i (SAS/SATA Cntrlr), 4 Hard Drives - RAID 10
  • Four 146GB 15K RPM SAS 3.5" Cabled Hard Drives
  • Power Supply, Redundant, 400W
 
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