Raid 10 and multiple Virtual Disks

Question

I have a client with a new PE R740 server with a PERC h740p RAID controller. The client wants to use RAID 10 for a SQL server but also wants to have separate drives for Transaction logs and the tempdb. Problem is, the server was purchased with only 4 drives. I can create a virtual disk but can I break that into smaller, multiple virtual disks for the OS to use from the PERC configuration? I know I can create the single virtual disk and then immediately shrink the volume size in WIndows and use the remaining space for the additional drive letters, but won't that take away from the performance benefit of separate drives for the SQL data?

Thanks

DELL-Shine K · Answer

You can create multiple virtual disk from same drives. In this case as you have 4 drives and creating RAID 10, you can create multiple RAID 10 using same 4 drives. When you create first virtual disk instead if selecting complete size mention the size which you need for that virtual disk. Once this is created you can again create more RAID 10 virtual disk from same drives using remaining space. On H740P RAID controller, You can create up to 16 virtual disk using same disk group. Refer "Max no of VDs per disk group" on below link with this detail

https://www.dell.com/support/manuals/en-us/poweredge-rc-h740p/perc10_ug/perc-card-specifications?guid=guid-4fb80a31-5d2d-4719-956e-d7579a20a69e&lang=en-us

Refer below link on creating virtual disk.

For first virtual disk select option "Unconfigured Capacity" option for "Select Physical Disks From" and "Virtual Disk Size" as size you need for first virtual disk

For second virtual disk onwards select option "Free Capacity" option for "Select Physical Disks From" and "Virtual Disk Size" as size you need for each virtual disk.

https://www.dell.com/support/manuals/en-us/poweredge-rc-h740p/perc10_ug/creating-virtual-disks?guid=guid-e971b750-8ca6-474a-a0ba-2d3cb91acb68&lang=en-us

PowerEdge HDD/SCSI/RAID

Raid 10 and multiple Virtual Disks

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