Setting up drive configuration for virtual Windows Server 2003
What is the best way to set up my drive configuration for five virtual windows server 2003 on a system with five 750gb drives on a SCSI controller?
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ASKED:
January 25, 2011 5:00 PM
UPDATED:
March 1, 2011 9:04 PM
Answer Wiki:
Hello,
Based on the number of machines, you will need a good performance to handle the load. (You don't refer what OS'es or Services like Exchange, SQL, etc. you will install on them. This might prevent the scenarios below.
If this is for a home/testing lab I suggest:
1 drive for the OS
4 configured with RAID 0 (to give you the best performance).
If this is not for testing purposes and you need some reliability, I would buy another drive, and configure them this way:
2 RAID 1 for OS
4 RAID 0+1 for virtual machines.
There are other possible configurations, but for a generic approach I think this would do a good job.
HTH
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You’ll want to select the RAID level depending on the amount of IO that you need to support. If once the machines boot they won’t to much IO very often, or the IO is mostly read then you’ll want to use RAID 5. If they are heavy write IO then you’ll want RAID 10. The host OS on RAID 1 is fine either way.
Raid 5 and/or Raid 10 for your type of set-up should be more than sufficient…