Exchange 2007 Hard Drive/Raid configuration

[jjatsk]

Hello, i am looking for advise on setting up a Dell 2950 with 6 hard drives for Exchange 2007. Here is what the situation will be.

Currently 27 email users and probably never see more than 50
(6) 73GB 10K SCSI
*I can buy 3 or 4 146GB if needed


I have seen quite a few articles on similar setups

Raid 5
All Disk

Mirror
(2) OS
(2) Logs
(2) Database

Mirror & Raid 5
(2) OS-Logs
(3) Database
(1)Hotswap

Any advise would be great. Thanks

 

[tommy2684]

Definitly go with RAID 5. That was you will have a hot spare. The server will run great! I am running Exchange 2007 in a VM with 1GB, and on a 7200RPM drive, and the performance is excellent!

 

[unhappy_mage]

With 50 users, why are you bothering with 10k disks? Buy a pair as OS disks if you must, but other than that pick whatever's cheap and set up raid 1+0. They'll appreciate the extra space, and it won't be appreciably slower.

Out of the configurations you've listed, I'd go for the last.

 

[jjatsk]

The server already had the hard drives in them. It was for another application that we dont use anymore so now i am going to use it for exchange. I was thinking the last one also but i see a lot of people say you always want your OS & Logs on seperate hard drives and if i mirrored the OS & Logs they will be one correct? Is there any other conversions i missed that i could do with what i have?

Thanks again