RAID1 or RAID10 for VMs

raidvmware-esxi

I am about to retask a 2950 to consolidate some VM's on to a single ESXi server. The server is as follows

  • Dell 2950
  • 2x Intel X5365 @ 3.0Ghz
  • 16GB RAM (8x 2GB ECC)
  • 2x 73GB 10k SAS
  • 4 x 300GB 10K SAS

My question is whether I should go with RAID1/RAID10 or RAID1/RAID1/RAID1?

The VM's are as follows:

  1. MOSS front end for 100 users
  2. MOSS SQL backend for 100 users
  3. IIS Website very low traffic
  4. TOMCAT website very low traffic
  5. CRM Application that sync contacts between our Exchange and ERP servers also not a brute

Any advice on what to put where to get the best performance out of MOSS would be appreciated.

Please note this is the only hardware I have available, we have a very tight budget and can't buy another server to host SQL so it has to stay virtualized.

Edit: Database is read intensive, very few writes. I think this helps the all RAID1 position

Best Answer

I'd definitely go with three RAID 1 volumes; the usable space is the same (50% of total disks size), but you can choose to place VMs on different arrays,and when two VMs are each one on its own physical disk(s) they perform a lot faster than when they're spread across one big array only.

I'd then place the VMs like this:

First array: OS, IIS, tomcat Second array: MOSS front-end, CRM Third array: MOSS back-end

Depending on your workload, you can place them differently; but having a fully dedicated array for the most disk-intensive VM will surely provide a benefit.

Related Topic