Server Drives?

[Henke77]

We are about to exchange a server at work and I wanted to know what everyone thinks about SATA vs. SCSI.
The server is a fileserver with Exchange server on it, etc, etc. 2Gb ram. Should we use 3x250 GB SATA, RAID5 (2x250GB RAID1) or 2x73GB SCSI, RAID1. The size of the disks aren't that crucial.

Thanks.

 

[etp777]

SCSI

 

[sjonnie]

Depends on access patterns, number of users, amount of data needed to be stored. With a MS Exchange server I would estimate access to be mostly random read/writes, the number of users to be high and the amount of data to be low.

The 3x250GB RAID5 array will be hopelessly slow in such a scenario, SCSI is really your only option.

<A HREF="http://www.anandtech.com/myanandtech.html?member=114979" target="_new">My PCs</A>

 

[jim552]

Why is it that the SCSI RAID 1 that is mentioned is using 73gb drives, while the SATA that is mentioned is using 250GB drives?

The Western Digital 74gb Raptors are the, overall, fastest SATA drives I have used. I think they would be a better match/comparison to SCSI.

Yes, SCSI will ultimately be faster, but unless you have HUGE amounts of Exchange Server activity is it unlikely to make much difference in performance.

Currently I have three different Exchange/File Servers in place. ALL of my Exchange Servers are on Servers with 1gb of RAM and all of them use SATA as well. (Combinatios of Raptor 36gb and 74gb drives as necessary.)

If you need more space/performance, then go with Exchange Server v2003 and make additional storage pools and put the logs and data on separate drive pairs. (This can be done in Exchange v2000 as well, but I have only done it with Exchange v2003.)

I have NO, problem trusing my Servers to SATA and I have had no issues. (NOTE: I actively test, and verify RAID operation once a month. While there have been no failures, I find it reassuring to do so. Basically, and granted not necessarily comprehensibly, I just break a mirror pair or checksum group and insert a new drive to force a rebuild.)

I don't see why there should be nay issues. Our overal activity is, what I would consider moderate.

Each Server has about 100 users, and ab out 16gb of message storage space used. We also have anti-virus scanning installed on each sever as well.

Good Luck.