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Optimize hard drives for SQL

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by antsoair

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I would like to get peoples opinions. We are building some new SQL servers and are deciding on our standards. I support setting up two hard drives as a mirror for the NT 4.0 system, a single hard drive for log files and swap files, and a raid5 forthe database files using hardware raid. This seems to be a popular setup. Others have argued that with a hardware raid it is best to set up the the whole server on a single raid5 partition. What do you think is the best combination for speed, reliability, and recoverability?

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by lastsurvivor

Your setup of mirrored drives and a log/page file drive with the rest being RAID5 is the most robust and the quickest. But if your woried about your Database outgrowing your available database drive space then RAID5 all the way across may be the best solution. You need to way Speed and Rec Vs Space.

by wmusil

You can now implement ultra3 (160MB/s) RAID5. The single Log drive can be an I/O bottleneck on high-transaction-count systems. Try to build a Hardware/Caching-RAID5 volume on as may drives as possible. The more physical disks, the faster the array under load (to a point, 5 is better than 3, 8 on most controllers is max). You can split the drive with FDISK if needed. Add a hot spare for additional security.

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