DL380 G5 RAID10 and Exchange 2003

[Andrew Collado]

MS wants Exchange on a RAID10 array and if you're using 8 SAS drives, would you want to throw all 8 into one RAID10 and logically cut that into drives for OS, Logs, and DBs? In pre-SAS enviros, we'd RAID1 (2) disks for the OS, RAID1 (2) more for the logs and RAID5 the rest for the DB using the Duplex SCSI backplace to separate the channels for OS/Logs and the DBs.

Is that the case anymore? Do the SAS drives operate on their own channels now without additional hardware/configuration?

Thanks!

Andy

[Igor Karasik]

The answer can very depend on your Exchange server usage.

Generally speaking for 8 SAS drives I would use
1) RAID1 for OS (2 drives)
2)
a)RAID10 for Database and Logs (6 drives)
b)RAID10 for Database (4 drives) and RAID1 for logs (2 drives)

You can read very interesting and useful articles about Exchange storage recommendations here:
http://msexchangeteam.com/archive/category/3303.aspx