Hard drives for schoolserver

[Jason94]

Hello guys,

I'm working on a huge task for school which counts for my exams in june, but I'm stuck on a couple of questions and here's one of them:

So I have a school server with 200 computers and 500 users. The server which I'm using is a Dell PowerEdge R715 2U-rackserver. But, what hard drives do I best use for my server?
The server needs to support virtualising, (huge) databases, normal office/mathematic applications, etc. Basicly everything you expect from a school server.

Here's the list of hard drives which I can pick:

73GB, SAS 6Gbps, 2.5-in, 15K RPM Hard Drive (Hot Plug)
146GB, SAS 6Gbps, 2.5-in, 10K RPM Hard Drive (Hot Plug)
146GB, SAS 6Gbps, 2.5-in, 15K RPM Hard Drive (Hot Plug)
300GB, SAS 6Gbps, 2.5-in, 10K RPM Hard Drive (Hot Plug)
600GB, SAS 6Gbps, 2.5-in, 10K RPM Hard Drive (Hot Plug)
600GB, SAS 6Gbps, 2.5-in, 10K RPM Hard Drive (Hot Plug)
900GB, SAS 6Gbps, 2.5-in, 10K RPM Hard Drive (Hot Plug) 500GB, Near Line SAS 6Gbps, 2.5-in, 7.2K RPM Hard Drive (Hot Plug)
1TB, Near Line SAS 6Gbps, 2.5-in, 7.2K RPM Hard Drive (Hot Plug)
160GB, SATA, 2.5-in, 7.2K RPM Hard Drive (Hot Plug)
250GB, SATA, 2.5-in, 7.2K RPM Hard Drive (Hot Plug)
500GB, SATA, 2.5-in, 7.2K RPM Hard Drive (Hot Plug)
1TB, SATA, 2.5-in, 7.2K RPM Hard Drive (Hot Plug)
50GB, Solid State Disk SATA, 2.5-in Hard Drive (Hot Plug)
100GB, Solid State Disk SATA, 2.5-in Hard Drive (Hot Plug)
149GB, SSD SAS 3Gbps, 2.5-in Hard Drive (Hot Plug)

I need to use atleast 1 SSD for tasks which need to be performed fast (like database writing and such). The other hard drive(s) will be for storage and all other tasks.

Thanks in advance and sorry for the stupid question...
(I also have another thread in the RAID forum which also belongs to the same task)

 

[Jason94]

*This post may be deleted*

 

[chris6273]

Okay, the first thing we need to know is how good the network infrastructure is. Does the switch(s) which the server connects into, support Trunking, allowing you to combine gigabit connections (The R175 has 2 x 2GbE ports). If it doesn't then that will affect what hard drives you choose, as the server will not be capable of serving as fast as it can.

How much data are you looking to store on this server, and with a server of those specs, how much on average will data be accessed?

For storage, I would go with the: 1TB, SATA, 2.5-in, 7.2K RPM Hard Drive (Hot Plug) because of its capacity and because its SATA.

For the primary Hard Drive, I would go with the 100GB, Solid State Disk SATA, 2.5-in Hard Drive (Hot Plug) because its of reasonable capacity and speed.

By the way, you haven't stated which SATA version some of the choices are (Whether they be 3Gbps or 6Gbps).