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RAID Array

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by colmgdonnelly

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Hi, im familiar enough with RAID and its operations. My question is this. I have just inherited a server with both the o.s. and data all running off a raid 5 array. Im happy enough with this fault tolerance but am concerned that perhaps the o.s. should be on raid 1 array (separate from the data). There will be a lot of work involved in changing this and was wondering will i notice any performance increase if i decide to separate the o.s. and data onto two different arrays.

Thanks

4 replies

by shady108

i would leave it as it is, RAID 5 provides the best faul tolerance and in my opinion is the best configuration for the server

by shady108

i live and die by the moto 'if it aint broke dont fix it!'

usually by trying to fix something thats not broken you end up with so many more problems!

by bart777

If you REALLY want to move things to a RAID1 Mirror for the OS and a smaller RAID5 for the data then yes you WOULD see an improvement.

Here is why. With a single array you can only write to 1 logical drive or the other. So if the OS needs to do some work then the data access will be slower. If the drive is busy copying a large data file the OS may have to wait for disk access and response will be slower.

IF you have a 5 disk array and have the time and energy I would go ahead and redo the server. Set the OS to a mmirror. That way is can have control of it's own area. Move the data to a 3+ disk RAID5 array.

The one thing to keep in mind is disk space on your data array. you want to make sure it's sized so that as your data grows you will be able to haandle the load on that reduced size array. Or go and get another disk now and setup the array for that planned growth.

It will be a fair amount of work and should not be taken lightly. Keep in mind the time contraints that your company may have in case you have problems getting the shares and security set back properly on this new server.

So since it ain't broke, make darn sure you want to do this before you start!!!!!

Best of luck

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