RAID & Drive Type for Server?

I'm shopping for a dedicated server service to host my web application that
uses SQL Server 2000 (eventually 2005) with everything on one box (IIS, COM+
application, etc.) although backups will go to a NAS unit. My database is
currently less than 300mb but I would certainly want to accommodate a 3gb+
database and accommodate ten or a hundred concurrent web users as my
business hopefully improves.
One of the hosting companies offers a number of RAID choices. Their choices
include RAID 0 (not fault tolerant - won't be using that), RAID 1 with two
drives, RAID 5 with three drives, and RAID 10 with four drives. There is
apparently NOT the luxury of further configuration options like more drives
using one RAID configuration, mixing RAID flavors with more drives, etc.
There is also the choice between using SATA II drives (7200 or 10000 rpm,
250 to 750gbs - about 200gb more than I will ever need) or SA-SCSI (10 or
15K rpm, 73gb only)
With these constrained choices, what would be your recommendations for the
best redundancy and best fault tolerance where the speed of read-writes is
less of an issue (because no user would ever notice the difference until the
server was running at 50% cpu or more)?
My thought is the more drives the better, the fast the rpm the better, but I
don't know enough about whether SATA drives is the next new thing compared
to SCSI technology, and I don't know whether the difference between RAID 5
or 10 would really make any difference (besides decreasing the chance of
failure with one more drive).
Thanks for any recommendations or thoughts.Given the small size of your database, I'd probably go with RAID 1. It would
give you enough space, less expensive than RAID 10, lower overhead than RAID
5, and better protection than RAID 0. And again given what you described, I'd
probably not want to explore any new(er) technologies, and I would just go
with the mature SCSI, have it set up, get it running and forget about it.
Linchi
"Don Miller" wrote:
> I'm shopping for a dedicated server service to host my web application that
> uses SQL Server 2000 (eventually 2005) with everything on one box (IIS, COM+
> application, etc.) although backups will go to a NAS unit. My database is
> currently less than 300mb but I would certainly want to accommodate a 3gb+
> database and accommodate ten or a hundred concurrent web users as my
> business hopefully improves.
> One of the hosting companies offers a number of RAID choices. Their choices
> include RAID 0 (not fault tolerant - won't be using that), RAID 1 with two
> drives, RAID 5 with three drives, and RAID 10 with four drives. There is
> apparently NOT the luxury of further configuration options like more drives
> using one RAID configuration, mixing RAID flavors with more drives, etc.
> There is also the choice between using SATA II drives (7200 or 10000 rpm,
> 250 to 750gbs - about 200gb more than I will ever need) or SA-SCSI (10 or
> 15K rpm, 73gb only)
> With these constrained choices, what would be your recommendations for the
> best redundancy and best fault tolerance where the speed of read-writes is
> less of an issue (because no user would ever notice the difference until the
> server was running at 50% cpu or more)?
> My thought is the more drives the better, the fast the rpm the better, but I
> don't know enough about whether SATA drives is the next new thing compared
> to SCSI technology, and I don't know whether the difference between RAID 5
> or 10 would really make any difference (besides decreasing the chance of
> failure with one more drive).
> Thanks for any recommendations or thoughts.
>
>|||I tend to agree with Linchi given the small size of the db. Most if not all
of the data should be in cache anyway so there should be very little disk
I/O on a constant basis.
--
Andrew J. Kelly SQL MVP
"Don Miller" <nospam@.nospam.com> wrote in message
news:eAH7N0W9GHA.3348@.TK2MSFTNGP03.phx.gbl...
> I'm shopping for a dedicated server service to host my web application
> that
> uses SQL Server 2000 (eventually 2005) with everything on one box (IIS,
> COM+
> application, etc.) although backups will go to a NAS unit. My database is
> currently less than 300mb but I would certainly want to accommodate a 3gb+
> database and accommodate ten or a hundred concurrent web users as my
> business hopefully improves.
> One of the hosting companies offers a number of RAID choices. Their
> choices
> include RAID 0 (not fault tolerant - won't be using that), RAID 1 with two
> drives, RAID 5 with three drives, and RAID 10 with four drives. There is
> apparently NOT the luxury of further configuration options like more
> drives
> using one RAID configuration, mixing RAID flavors with more drives, etc.
> There is also the choice between using SATA II drives (7200 or 10000 rpm,
> 250 to 750gbs - about 200gb more than I will ever need) or SA-SCSI (10 or
> 15K rpm, 73gb only)
> With these constrained choices, what would be your recommendations for the
> best redundancy and best fault tolerance where the speed of read-writes is
> less of an issue (because no user would ever notice the difference until
> the
> server was running at 50% cpu or more)?
> My thought is the more drives the better, the fast the rpm the better, but
> I
> don't know enough about whether SATA drives is the next new thing compared
> to SCSI technology, and I don't know whether the difference between RAID 5
> or 10 would really make any difference (besides decreasing the chance of
> failure with one more drive).
> Thanks for any recommendations or thoughts.
>|||One small caveat though, if a small database does a lot of writes, you can
still stress the I/O subsystem.
Linchi
"Andrew J. Kelly" wrote:
> I tend to agree with Linchi given the small size of the db. Most if not all
> of the data should be in cache anyway so there should be very little disk
> I/O on a constant basis.
> --
> Andrew J. Kelly SQL MVP
> "Don Miller" <nospam@.nospam.com> wrote in message
> news:eAH7N0W9GHA.3348@.TK2MSFTNGP03.phx.gbl...
> > I'm shopping for a dedicated server service to host my web application
> > that
> > uses SQL Server 2000 (eventually 2005) with everything on one box (IIS,
> > COM+
> > application, etc.) although backups will go to a NAS unit. My database is
> > currently less than 300mb but I would certainly want to accommodate a 3gb+
> > database and accommodate ten or a hundred concurrent web users as my
> > business hopefully improves.
> >
> > One of the hosting companies offers a number of RAID choices. Their
> > choices
> > include RAID 0 (not fault tolerant - won't be using that), RAID 1 with two
> > drives, RAID 5 with three drives, and RAID 10 with four drives. There is
> > apparently NOT the luxury of further configuration options like more
> > drives
> > using one RAID configuration, mixing RAID flavors with more drives, etc.
> >
> > There is also the choice between using SATA II drives (7200 or 10000 rpm,
> > 250 to 750gbs - about 200gb more than I will ever need) or SA-SCSI (10 or
> > 15K rpm, 73gb only)
> >
> > With these constrained choices, what would be your recommendations for the
> > best redundancy and best fault tolerance where the speed of read-writes is
> > less of an issue (because no user would ever notice the difference until
> > the
> > server was running at 50% cpu or more)?
> >
> > My thought is the more drives the better, the fast the rpm the better, but
> > I
> > don't know enough about whether SATA drives is the next new thing compared
> > to SCSI technology, and I don't know whether the difference between RAID 5
> > or 10 would really make any difference (besides decreasing the chance of
> > failure with one more drive).
> >
> > Thanks for any recommendations or thoughts.
> >
> >
>
>|||Thanks for the quick reply yesterday and for your thoughts.
"Linchi Shea" <LinchiShea@.discussions.microsoft.com> wrote in message
news:A93579B9-CD81-4E39-89AA-8955C05CB114@.microsoft.com...
> One small caveat though, if a small database does a lot of writes, you can
> still stress the I/O subsystem.
> Linchi
> "Andrew J. Kelly" wrote:
> > I tend to agree with Linchi given the small size of the db. Most if not
all
> > of the data should be in cache anyway so there should be very little
disk
> > I/O on a constant basis.
> >
> > --
> > Andrew J. Kelly SQL MVP
> >
> > "Don Miller" <nospam@.nospam.com> wrote in message
> > news:eAH7N0W9GHA.3348@.TK2MSFTNGP03.phx.gbl...
> > > I'm shopping for a dedicated server service to host my web application
> > > that
> > > uses SQL Server 2000 (eventually 2005) with everything on one box
(IIS,
> > > COM+
> > > application, etc.) although backups will go to a NAS unit. My database
is
> > > currently less than 300mb but I would certainly want to accommodate a
3gb+
> > > database and accommodate ten or a hundred concurrent web users as my
> > > business hopefully improves.
> > >
> > > One of the hosting companies offers a number of RAID choices. Their
> > > choices
> > > include RAID 0 (not fault tolerant - won't be using that), RAID 1 with
two
> > > drives, RAID 5 with three drives, and RAID 10 with four drives. There
is
> > > apparently NOT the luxury of further configuration options like more
> > > drives
> > > using one RAID configuration, mixing RAID flavors with more drives,
etc.
> > >
> > > There is also the choice between using SATA II drives (7200 or 10000
rpm,
> > > 250 to 750gbs - about 200gb more than I will ever need) or SA-SCSI (10
or
> > > 15K rpm, 73gb only)
> > >
> > > With these constrained choices, what would be your recommendations for
the
> > > best redundancy and best fault tolerance where the speed of
read-writes is
> > > less of an issue (because no user would ever notice the difference
until
> > > the
> > > server was running at 50% cpu or more)?
> > >
> > > My thought is the more drives the better, the fast the rpm the better,
but
> > > I
> > > don't know enough about whether SATA drives is the next new thing
compared
> > > to SCSI technology, and I don't know whether the difference between
RAID 5
> > > or 10 would really make any difference (besides decreasing the chance
of
> > > failure with one more drive).
> > >
> > > Thanks for any recommendations or thoughts.
> > >
> > >
> >
> >
> >