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I have a home office, I'm a developer and run a pair of SQL Server 2005 machines, which contain several fairly large databases (100 million records / 300 gig database files).
Being a one man show my budget is limited but it is a business and so I have to keep the machines up to snuff.
Using parts from Newegg, I built two "servers" many years ago with 320 gig Seagate drives back when 320 was the sweet spot. I use Areca 1220 controllers in both machines (VERY fast for their time). Using those drives I built two machines, each with a 1.8 tb array raid 6.
I am upgrading one of the machines, I just bought (6) 640 gig Western Digital Caviar SE16 WD6400AAKS, mostly because 640 is the sweet spot and these seem to have a high "Newegg reliability rating" for drives I can afford. I also found an Areca ARC-1261ML-1G open box for a price I couldn't turn down. I will be creating a Raid 5 array until I can get two more of these disks (yes, money is an issue) and will at that time bump it up to raid 6 with a hot spare. The nice thing about this controller card is that it gives me another 8 drive slots to play with vs the older 1220 which were only 8 drive controllers.
My questions have to do with trying to get the max speed out of this beast. I am currently running Windows 2003 x64 with 8 gigs ram and SQL Server 2005. I will probably try to move to Windows 2008 x64, and out in the first quarter move to 16 gigs RAM which this particular machine can handle.
The ARC-1261ML-1G can handle 16 hard drives. What I am trying to figure out is how to play this 16 drive card. A pair of those old 320 gig drives RAID 1 for the boot drive? I already have them and they are "free" so to speak.
I already have (4) 500 Seagate drives running Raid 5 on the 1220 that is in this server now (I had moved the 320s to a Promise controller which was significantly slower!). Do we think I can just move those (4) 500 gig drives onto the new 1261ML and have them recognized as a raid array?
One way or the other I am thinking about just getting another pair of those 500g drives to make a six drive raid 6.
So from a performance standpoint I could have a 320 g Raid 1 for boot, (eventually) an 8 drive raid 6 using the new 640s, and a 6 drive raid 6 using the 500s. This would allow me to put the SQL Server data drives on the array of 640s and the log files on the array of 500s and run the system off of a dedicated raid one, but all on a single 16 drive controller.
BTW, I ran into unexpected problems getting 12 drives to function off of a single 700w supply. The supply specs would appear to support it but they would just not all run together, even after doing "delayed spinup".
So what do you think, is this config make sense or should I be heading somewhere else with this.
BTW, I will be taking the left over 360s and using them in a HTTP MyMovies server, but eventually replacing them with bigger drives down the road.
Also BTW, I currently (also) run Windows 2003 x32 VMs on Windows 2003 Server x64 on this box. I have one specific licensed application that I kept having to go get a new license for (free, but a PITA) because of moving it around. In a VM I can move it at will and the app does not know it was moved since the "hardware" remains the same. This app NEEDS a RAM disk but I cannot currently afford the many hundreds of dollars for the superspeed version that will run on servers. I currently run the 4 gig i-RAM card, which works, faster than even my RAID arrays for this app, but it is nowhere close to a true RAM drive. OTOH, the VMs pick the iRAM up as a real drive whereas for some reason the VM cannot see the "driver" ram disks I have found and tested.
Anyway, thoughts on the raid configs mentioned above?
Being a one man show my budget is limited but it is a business and so I have to keep the machines up to snuff.
Using parts from Newegg, I built two "servers" many years ago with 320 gig Seagate drives back when 320 was the sweet spot. I use Areca 1220 controllers in both machines (VERY fast for their time). Using those drives I built two machines, each with a 1.8 tb array raid 6.
I am upgrading one of the machines, I just bought (6) 640 gig Western Digital Caviar SE16 WD6400AAKS, mostly because 640 is the sweet spot and these seem to have a high "Newegg reliability rating" for drives I can afford. I also found an Areca ARC-1261ML-1G open box for a price I couldn't turn down. I will be creating a Raid 5 array until I can get two more of these disks (yes, money is an issue) and will at that time bump it up to raid 6 with a hot spare. The nice thing about this controller card is that it gives me another 8 drive slots to play with vs the older 1220 which were only 8 drive controllers.
My questions have to do with trying to get the max speed out of this beast. I am currently running Windows 2003 x64 with 8 gigs ram and SQL Server 2005. I will probably try to move to Windows 2008 x64, and out in the first quarter move to 16 gigs RAM which this particular machine can handle.
The ARC-1261ML-1G can handle 16 hard drives. What I am trying to figure out is how to play this 16 drive card. A pair of those old 320 gig drives RAID 1 for the boot drive? I already have them and they are "free" so to speak.
I already have (4) 500 Seagate drives running Raid 5 on the 1220 that is in this server now (I had moved the 320s to a Promise controller which was significantly slower!). Do we think I can just move those (4) 500 gig drives onto the new 1261ML and have them recognized as a raid array?
One way or the other I am thinking about just getting another pair of those 500g drives to make a six drive raid 6.
So from a performance standpoint I could have a 320 g Raid 1 for boot, (eventually) an 8 drive raid 6 using the new 640s, and a 6 drive raid 6 using the 500s. This would allow me to put the SQL Server data drives on the array of 640s and the log files on the array of 500s and run the system off of a dedicated raid one, but all on a single 16 drive controller.
BTW, I ran into unexpected problems getting 12 drives to function off of a single 700w supply. The supply specs would appear to support it but they would just not all run together, even after doing "delayed spinup".
So what do you think, is this config make sense or should I be heading somewhere else with this.
BTW, I will be taking the left over 360s and using them in a HTTP MyMovies server, but eventually replacing them with bigger drives down the road.
Also BTW, I currently (also) run Windows 2003 x32 VMs on Windows 2003 Server x64 on this box. I have one specific licensed application that I kept having to go get a new license for (free, but a PITA) because of moving it around. In a VM I can move it at will and the app does not know it was moved since the "hardware" remains the same. This app NEEDS a RAM disk but I cannot currently afford the many hundreds of dollars for the superspeed version that will run on servers. I currently run the 4 gig i-RAM card, which works, faster than even my RAID arrays for this app, but it is nowhere close to a true RAM drive. OTOH, the VMs pick the iRAM up as a real drive whereas for some reason the VM cannot see the "driver" ram disks I have found and tested.
Anyway, thoughts on the raid configs mentioned above?