RAID 1 and VM's

[MichaelB010]

Hi guys,

I am looking at buying a GA-EQ45M-S2, which has the Intel ICH10DO controller to allow for RAID.

Will this allow me to have two RAID 1 arrays using four disks?

I may have the wrong approach so this is the background:
I would like to setup a machine to run hyper-v with numerous vm's (probably around 5).
The OS can be installed on the first array and the .vhd files for the VM's on the second.

There VM's will be:
DNS / DHCP
Domain Controller
SQL Database
SNORT IDS
Print and File Server
(possibly) Exchange

The system will be used by about 5/6 people.

Having read many previous posts on this forum, I would like to hear your opinion on this.

Cheers,
Michael

Update:

RAID10 appears to be a good way to go. The disk IO seems pretty good and I will have 4 disks anyway. I know RAID 0 will give the best performance but loosing one drive and having to rebuild and restore the entire system doesn't sound fun.

 

[sminlal]

I see no reason why what you're planning won't work.

Do you really need to create that many VMs, though? You could probably consolidate at least DNS/DHCP and File/Print onto a single server, and perhaps even more than that depending on how much work they're doing. It would save administration and overhead.

Don't forget that you'll still need to run backups even though you're using RAID 1.

 

[MichaelB010]

Hi sminlal,

Thanks for the reply.

I will consolidate the DNS/DHCP and File/Print onto the same VM. Saves a bit of memory hopefully! (Until Hyper-V with dynamic memory is tested)

Backups will be to a single drive not in the array.

The ICH10DO supports 6 SATA channels so four drives can be RAID10ed and the backup can just be plugged in. (I hope the controller allows for this setup, although I don't see why not)

An external hdd and offsite backup is also available.

Cheers,
Michael