HP Proliant ML350 Gen 8: How to set up the disks.

[JonathanAnon]

Hi, 

We are about to install a new HP Proliant ML350 Gen 8 server on to one of our sites and the job of setting up the server has been assigned to me. Out of the box the server has by default set up the 5 500Gb drives as RAID 5. I'm wondering what is the best way to set up the disks for this server. The details of the setup will be as follows:

- Windows Server 2012 will be the Hypervisor/Host OS, and there will be two virtualizes Windows Server 2012 Servers. 

- The first Windows Server 2012 virtual machine will be main system server, with data shares (about 100GB of information) and printers. The main system database (~20Gb) will also be located on this server.  

- The second Windows Server 2012 virtual machine will be for Remote Desktop Services. We will probably use a combination of session host and virtual desktops.. This part is very much secondary and will be more for testing with a view to rolling out in a few years. 

To be honest, the size of the disks is huge in comparison to the information that will be stored on it, so I'm just looking for other people's opinions on what they would consider the best way to set it up on the five disks. 

thanks in advance. 

[Johan Guldmyr]

Hi, 

belt and suspenders setup:

RAID10 with 2+2 disks and a spare.

Gives ~1TB of usable space that is both fast and reliable.

It is possible to expand a RAID10 array with more disks in the future if needed.