I'm trying to decide the best way to allocate the disk space in my new MD3200i. Is there any draw backs to creating one large disk group with all the disks and just creating virtual disks as needed?
The first question would have to be: what do you plan to do with this storage? e.g. run virtual machines, storage for a share on a server, backups/backup staging (backup as disk-to-disk-to-tape), run exchange/sql/oracle/other database.
One large diskgroup means:
- if a raid issue were to pop up, all your data is affected
- if one virtual disk is being hit really hard, all virtual disks will notice this in their performance
- if it's a raid 5, writes will be slower than 2 smaller raid 5's (but reads will be faster)
- if it's a raid 5, a rebuild to a hotspare or replacement drive takes longer the larger the raid 5 (i.e. a 6-disk raid 5 is quicker to rebuild than a 12 disk raid 5 with the exact same drives)
if you have a fully loaded MD3200i, and you're considering raid 5, I'd go something like:
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Posted January 21st, 2011 11:00
The first question would have to be: what do you plan to do with this storage? e.g. run virtual machines, storage for a share on a server, backups/backup staging (backup as disk-to-disk-to-tape), run exchange/sql/oracle/other database.
One large diskgroup means:
- if a raid issue were to pop up, all your data is affected
- if one virtual disk is being hit really hard, all virtual disks will notice this in their performance
- if it's a raid 5, writes will be slower than 2 smaller raid 5's (but reads will be faster)
- if it's a raid 5, a rebuild to a hotspare or replacement drive takes longer the larger the raid 5 (i.e. a 6-disk raid 5 is quicker to rebuild than a 12 disk raid 5 with the exact same drives)
if you have a fully loaded MD3200i, and you're considering raid 5, I'd go something like:
- 6 disk raid 5
- 5 disk raid 5
- hotspare