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Best Practices raid configuration for Domain Controller

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7 replies

by bobmwoosterschool

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I am building a new Domain controller. I was wondering what best practices is for the raid configuration on a domain controller. All one raid 5 with two volumes? or two separate raids, with one for OS and one for data. Microsoft likes to keep the SYSVOl and NTDS directories on separate volumes.

7 replies

by scott_heath

How many drives do you have? I'm partial to 5 drives, 2 mirrored (RAID1) for the system (Server 2003 install & patches), then RAID5 on the remaining drives for app installs, data, and DS info.

by cg it

With a DC that is nothing more than a domain controller, you have to ask, how critical is this DC, how dependable are the HDDs, how long will it take to get it back online if it goes down?

RAID 5 with parity, hot swap allows you to replace a failed drive and rebuild with minimum distruption.

If this was a database server, I could see SCSI RAID 5 hotswap but if it's just a DC, maybe plain old dual partition will suffice.

With backups to HDDs, it's easier, faster, cheaper to just restore from backup utilizing a new HDD and your most recent full backup.

by bobmwoosterschool

This box is an HP DL360-G5 with 4 72GB drives. It is strictly a DC, but I was wondering if there is a best practices recommendation out there.

by scott_heath

When the volumes\partitions are on the same physical disk(s) there is no benefits to splitting them. You are still writing to the same physical location. The point of seperate physical disks is performance. Although if this is a small environment and there won't be many users, it doesn't really matter that much. When you have thousands of objects to replicate disk usage is more important.

by cg it

go with RAID 5 and partition it with at least 2 partitions. one for system and one for anything else.

by scott_heath

technet.microsoft.com has all sorts of documents on AD configuration. I think the largest concern is how many users you will have. With only 4 drives RAID5 is the best option. I'm not sure splitting it into two partitions buys you much, although people like to do this in case the Windows install blows up. You can do a clean re-install and not lose data. Of course, that is what your backups are for! All joking aside, it isn't a bad idea. Most of our new servers are blades with mirrored 146GB drives and all data is stored on the SAN.

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