Mirror or RAID5 for Web Content

Hi Guys,

Not sure if this question can be answered as there as so many factors that
may need to be considered. But i'll ask anyhow to get some opinions.

Is it better to put the system drive on a separate dedicated mirrored aray
and web content on a seperate RAID5 array in the same server (your typical
rack mount HP server in the enterprise environment : i.e. mirror for system
and RAID5 for data as a corporate standard server build)

OR

Is it just as feasible to put system and web content on a single mirror
configured with 2 partitions (c:\ and d:\) i.e. your typical blade server
will local disk only.

I mean to make this decision can you guys explain to me what kind of factors
I may need to find out.

Any steer appreciated.

Loz

Re: Mirror or RAID5 for Web Content

This really depends on your web application.

Most web apps are not disk I/O bound. You have some pages, and these will
get loaded into memory (or even if they aren't, they're just small files on
your disk). In that case, there isn't really a need for lots of spindles, or
for large amounts of data storage (that you can get with large RAID5 arrays)

But, we don't know what your web app does.

Cheers
Ken

--
My IIS Blog: www.adOpenStatic.com/cs/blogs/ken

"lozza" wrote in message
news:F27E0271-0BCA-4CCB-B295-A3E4E68C57CE@microsoft.com...
> Hi Guys,
>
> Not sure if this question can be answered as there as so many factors that
> may need to be considered. But i'll ask anyhow to get some opinions.
>
> Is it better to put the system drive on a separate dedicated mirrored aray
> and web content on a seperate RAID5 array in the same server (your typical
> rack mount HP server in the enterprise environment : i.e. mirror for
> system
> and RAID5 for data as a corporate standard server build)
>
> OR
>
> Is it just as feasible to put system and web content on a single mirror
> configured with 2 partitions (c:\ and d:\) i.e. your typical blade server
> will local disk only.
>
> I mean to make this decision can you guys explain to me what kind of
> factors
> I may need to find out.
>
> Any steer appreciated.
>
> Loz

Re: Mirror or RAID5 for Web Content

Hi Ken,

Thanks for the reply.... I understand what you're saying. Its kind of
difficult to explain, as there are hundreds of applications residing under a
couple of URLs. Not sure how each application has been coded or what it does
(i;m not a developer) just been tasked to move them onto a new platform for
migration purposes.

I'm guessing I could try and get disk stats over the last couple of months
for these servers, would that make the decision easier and what would I look
for to make this decision?

Not sure how to describe the applications... Some make DB calls, some allow
uploading of files, downloading of files, some are static content, there's
just loads... they are pretty busy servers though... again probably not
giving enough information here.

Currently the servers sit on Rack Mount HP DL servers, 6 disks, split into a
System, mirror and a RAID5 Web content array.

I;d like to redesign onto Blade servers, which will only give 2 local disks
(and they'll be mirrored of course with 2 partitions), but do offer the same
in terms of actual space required to match the HP servers these Web Sites
currently reside on.


"Ken Schaefer" wrote:

> This really depends on your web application.
>
> Most web apps are not disk I/O bound. You have some pages, and these will
> get loaded into memory (or even if they aren't, they're just small files on
> your disk). In that case, there isn't really a need for lots of spindles, or
> for large amounts of data storage (that you can get with large RAID5 arrays)
>
> But, we don't know what your web app does.
>
> Cheers
> Ken
>
> --
> My IIS Blog: www.adOpenStatic.com/cs/blogs/ken
>
> "lozza" wrote in message
> news:F27E0271-0BCA-4CCB-B295-A3E4E68C57CE@microsoft.com...
> > Hi Guys,
> >
> > Not sure if this question can be answered as there as so many factors that
> > may need to be considered. But i'll ask anyhow to get some opinions.
> >
> > Is it better to put the system drive on a separate dedicated mirrored aray
> > and web content on a seperate RAID5 array in the same server (your typical
> > rack mount HP server in the enterprise environment : i.e. mirror for
> > system
> > and RAID5 for data as a corporate standard server build)
> >
> > OR
> >
> > Is it just as feasible to put system and web content on a single mirror
> > configured with 2 partitions (c:\ and d:\) i.e. your typical blade server
> > will local disk only.
> >
> > I mean to make this decision can you guys explain to me what kind of
> > factors
> > I may need to find out.
> >
> > Any steer appreciated.
> >
> > Loz
>
>