IDE Raid for Servers

[LokutusofBorg]

I'm tasked with speccing two simple servers out with a budget of $1200 dollars. We just need one to house Exchange and one to be a peer DC and file server. My supervisor wants to utilize IDE Raid 1 that's built into Windows 2000 as the info being served by these machines is important enough. We can't afford SCSI (and probably wouldn't see gains from using it), but there's just something in my gut that doesn't like the idea of using IDE raid support in Windows. One only has to look as far as Windows Backup to realize that Microsoft is putting as much or more money/effort into things like Solitaire as they are into core utilities for their OS's. I do think that IDE Raid is reliable enough for what we're looking for for these servers, but I have my doubts about Windows 2000 Built-in Raid. We'll most likely run the OS off a single drive not in the array, and just have two drives in a mirror array hosting the important stuffs for these servers.

[*]Does anyone have any experience running Windows 2000 Raid 1 off the motherboard IDE controller?
[*]Does anyone have any advice concerning IDE Software Raid solutions? (I like what I read about the Iwill SIDE RAID100 card.)
[*]Does anyone have any recommendations as far as hard drives to buy to use in these mirror arrays? (2 drives per server, ~100 - 150 GB capacity per server is fine.)
[*]Is there anyone that would stand by their guns in recommending a Hardware Raid solution over software (not Windows 2000)? These machines aren't going to be maxxing their CPU's, and the budget cuts the hardware option out, I think, but would like to hear opinions.


Side question -- Any recommendations on power supplies for these two machines? I'll read up on it, just thought if anyone that replies has a one or two sentence answer to this one they could easily add it. 🙂

Thanks.

 

[Budman]

I found this link,I hope it helps

RAID Without Additional Hardware: Do It Yourself With Windows 2000

 

[MercenaryForHire]

The software RAID in W2K isn't as bad as many people make it out to be, but a hardware-level solution is still best. And a good RAID card isn't that expensive. A FastTrak TX2 (two-channel ATA100) is only $70 at many online locations, money well spent.

For PSUs, there's threads aplenty on this, and FiringSquad has an article about them I believe. Redundant PSUs might be a good idea if this is a critical server, or a UPS. 🙂

- M4H

 

[Pariah]

"Does anyone have any advice concerning IDE Software Raid solutions? (I like what I read about the Iwill SIDE RAID100 card."

Windows 2000 should work just as well, no reason to spend money on hardware that something else does for free.

"Does anyone have any recommendations as far as hard drives to buy to use in these mirror arrays? (2 drives per server, ~100 - 150 GB capacity per server is fine.)"

Really doesn't matter. Same recommendations for single drives as RAID 1 drives.

"Is there anyone that would stand by their guns in recommending a Hardware Raid solution over software (not Windows 2000)? These machines aren't going to be maxxing their CPU's, and the budget cuts the hardware option out, I think, but would like to hear opinions."

The only reason to go with a hardware RAID 1 solution would be for load balanced reads. 3Ware cards are the only ones I know of that can and they aren't really in the budget for your systems. Load balancing RAID 1 adapters use both drives during reads like a RAID 0 array, so reads perform better than a single drive or typical RAID 1 array.

"Any recommendations on power supplies for these two machines?"

Antec

 

[Vegito]

wow exchange.. dont skim on that..

2 thing.. 1 lots of memory. I just built my last exchange for the year with a dual p3 1.26 ghz, 4gb ram and a 28gb raid 5 (7gbx5 drive) boot OS and 108 gb raid 5 (27x5 drive) DATA - Public & Private store.

Exchange is memory hog.. software raid is not good..
how much exchange/mail are you expecting a day, exchange gets hit hard with crap..

2. super cache

super cache for exchange

but it depends on you.. Im a heavy exchange user, 50,000 mail daily

 

[sharkeeper]

Supercache does what MS disk cache already does.

Exchange is optimised (by using) lots of memory. Remember if you have more than 75% physical memory free, it's doing NOTHING to enhance performance. Using large disk cache (default for 2000 server) helps tremendously. Just make sure the server has a good UPS. 🙂 Also, storage stability (meaning no errors EVER) is imperative to your exchange information stores. Place them on a flaky volume and you'll be sad.

Cheers!

 

[LokutusofBorg]

Our Exchange box will handle something on the order of 1/50th of that load (only 10 users on the system). We do expect to double within two years, but that's still not that much of a load on the box. Which is why we're able to build a server for it for around $600 🙂. The boxes will have 1GB RAM, I'll make other things slide to get that in (or pressure Accounting for more money). I think that caliber of box will be sufficient to run Exchange for this office for a couple years, projected growth included.

Does anyone have practical experience running Windows 2000 raid in a production environment (server or workstation)?

 

[Vegito]

then thats more then enuff.. but i would have ur user archive weekly/monthly archive those elsewhere.

 

[LokutusofBorg]

Originally posted by: sharkeeper
... Also, storage stability (meaning no errors EVER) is imperative to your exchange information stores. Place them on a flaky volume and you'll be sad.

Sharkeeper, that's one of my main concerns about using the raid support built into Windows 2000 and just using the mobo IDE controllers. I'm pretty confident that an IDE Raid 1 array will do exactly what we're wanting it to do (be stable and give us the high degree of data protection) but I'm not so sure the above combination can do that.

First off is the performance hit I anticipate by loading up the IDE controllers on the mobo (system disk, CDROM, 2 disks for raid 1) and second is my instinctual distrust of Windows raid support. Nobody has written an article on it that I can find, and no one on the forums here seems to have an answer for it. I'll ask it one more time and if no one can give me some assurance they've seen it be dependable I'm going to ride my assumption that it isn't and find a solution that is (3rd party IDE raid card).

Has anyone used Windows 2000 (Server)'s raid 1 support and found it to be stable enough to use in a low-level production server?

Thanks.

 

[mrzed]

Get the Maxtor D740X. Still the fastest IDE drives in server performance overall (sez Storagereview.com). Cheap too, and reliable as far as I know.