One Large Array or Multiple Smaller Arrays

[BillyClark]

Hi,

Any help with some fairly simple questions (I hope) would be much appreciated.

I have the following equipment:

1 x c7000 enclosure
2 x Brocade 4/24 SAN Switch
4 x BL480c blades with 2 x 72GB mirrored SAS disks.
2 x MSA1500 in active/active mode
2 x MSA 30 enclosures each with 14 x 300GB 15K SCSI

Each blade is running Windows Server 2008 from the local SAS disks and are clustered from within Windows to allow shared access to the MSA SAN.

I have a number of logical disks to create to on the SAN to support multiple virtual machines running on Microsoft's Hyper-V.

There will be a combination of small and large LUNs depending on the requirements of the particular VM.

If these were physical disks I would have RAID 1+0 for the devices that require it and RAID 5 for data storage.

Given this I have the following questions:

1. Is it best to create one large array in the HP ACU or multiple smaller ones.

2. Should I mix RAID levels on the same array.

3. Does the RAID level affect the throuhput on an MSA 1500 SAN or does the SAN acceleration negate the usual benefits.

Thanks in anticipation.

Billy