Our company is about to start hosting our own website (used GoDaddy until now). We are planning on getting a PowerEdge 2900 III server with two quad-core processors, 4 GB ram, and a number of HDDs that will back each other up.
My question is, what type of RAID should I use? I have been told by some that I should use a Raid 5/1 option with 5HDDs (73GB 15k) (1 for OS, 1 to mirror the OS, and the rest to use parity to backup the server root). Is this a good solution? I have heard that RAID5 isn’t worth the resources it uses.
The database that runs the site now isn’t very large, which is why I am opting for the 73GB drives. We will also be purchasing another external backup solution, probably a 36/72GB tape backup. Any suggestions on this matter would be helpful.
Thanks,
Paul