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Blackbeard08

5 Posts

5160

December 7th, 2007 00:00

My first server confused.

I just got a dell poweredge 4400.
 
I found enough documentation to get my drives set up, but im a bit confused.
 
Drive 00 - 18GB  
Drive 01 - 18GB
Drive 02 - 18GB
Drive 03 - 18GB
Drive 04 - 18GB
Drive 05 - 18GB
Drive 08 - 18GB
Drive 09 - 18GB
 
On raid 5 (it shows as 89GB on 1 volume) to me that sounds like it might be right 5 drives in raid 5 with 1 redundancy one. But im not sure.
Next the os disk, that shows as 18GB (well 16 but so everyone knows were talking about 18GB scsi 10k drives) So that leaves 1 drive missing...
 
This is my first ever server, it has win2k server on it, dual 1ghz, 128mb raid ram and 2gb of normal ram (8x256mb) So im not sure how the drives are supposed to be.
 
I know i want the os to be mirrored, it may well affect performance, but this thing flies anyway, and the other 6 drives as one big raid 5 fault tolerant one.

pcmeiners

6 Operator

 • 

1.8K Posts

December 7th, 2007 13:00

With raid 5, the total  capacity is the capacity of the member drives times the number of drives in the array , minus the capacity of 1 drive so 6 x 18=108  minus 18 = 90, so you should have a 6 drive raid 5... so the formatted capacity of 89 sounds OK, as you loose a bit of capacity in formatting.
The raid 1 takes two drives, so 1 drive should be left, which you should setup as a  global hotspare, if your raid adapter has this feature or as a standard hotspare for one of the arrays, if it does not support the global type. The global hotspare will act as a hotspare for both the raid 1 and raid 5
 
Pat yourself on the back, this is the best setup for speed/ safety/capacity. You want the OS on a raid 1 for safety, as placing it on a raid 5 is not nearly as safe. You have incorporated more than the minimum number of drives in the raid 5; as each drive added to a raid 5, past he minimum number increases throughput (up to a point), and you will have a hotspare in place.
 
I work with a few 4400(s) and they are remarkable fast for the cpu speed.
 
Wait till you see what the newest drives and raid adapters will do !!!!


Message Edited by pcmeiners on 12-07-2007 09:48 AM

Blackbeard08

5 Posts

December 8th, 2007 04:00

Thank you.
 
I like the 4400, its a steep learning curve, it certainly isnt as easy to use as XP but for a webserver it has more than enough power to server simple webpages.
I just got a bit confused as i had never used raid before so many thanks for explaining it to me :)

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