Folks,

I did a thread a month or so ago about my new HW and plans to virtualize
SBS2008 Premium and the Server08 install, and got a lot of good advice and
plan to start this process in the next week or so. I will be doing a
SBSMigration from SBS 2003 to SBS 2008.
One question if I may:
I bought a server with 24G of RAM and 4-300Gb 10K Disks. My plan is to
create one big raid 5 HW array and for SBS2008 setup 100Gb for the OS, and
250Gb for Exchange, and on the Server08 box 100Gb for the OS, and 450Gb for
apps and file storage.
Does this sound reasonable? A friend suggested to me to do the raid 5 at
the HW and slice up the disks in each VM, as that is what he does in his VM
environment. But he isn't running Exchange nor SBS2008, so I wanted to ask
the experts.



Thanks for any replies.

Mike

You should always use hardware RAID on a virtual host. What you are planning
is reasonable, and the performance will certainly depend a lot on your RAID
controller.
Also, you should try to have a dual quad core CPUs.

--
Regards,
Boon



"Mike" <Mike@newsgroup> wrote in message
news:B2983083-0BC7-47A0-BC15-576145DA9DB8@newsgroup

> Folks,
>
> I did a thread a month or so ago about my new HW and plans to virtualize
> SBS2008 Premium and the Server08 install, and got a lot of good advice and
> plan to start this process in the next week or so. I will be doing a
> SBSMigration from SBS 2003 to SBS 2008.
> One question if I may:
> I bought a server with 24G of RAM and 4-300Gb 10K Disks. My plan is to
> create one big raid 5 HW array and for SBS2008 setup 100Gb for the OS,
> and
> 250Gb for Exchange, and on the Server08 box 100Gb for the OS, and 450Gb
> for
> apps and file storage.
> Does this sound reasonable? A friend suggested to me to do the raid 5 at
> the HW and slice up the disks in each VM, as that is what he does in his
> VM
> environment. But he isn't running Exchange nor SBS2008, so I wanted to
> ask
> the experts.
>
> Thanks for any replies.
>
> Mike
>

if you have a single set of spindles (single RAID array) the only reason for
partitioning is management, partitioning does not improve performance.

I'd create the RAID array and partition 40GB for Hyper-V Server OS, rest as
a single partition for my VHDs.

and yes, you want hardware rather than software (hack ptoooiii) RAID.

"Mike" <Mike@newsgroup> wrote in message
news:B2983083-0BC7-47A0-BC15-576145DA9DB8@newsgroup

> Folks,
>
> I did a thread a month or so ago about my new HW and plans to virtualize
> SBS2008 Premium and the Server08 install, and got a lot of good advice and
> plan to start this process in the next week or so. I will be doing a
> SBSMigration from SBS 2003 to SBS 2008.
> One question if I may:
> I bought a server with 24G of RAM and 4-300Gb 10K Disks. My plan is to
> create one big raid 5 HW array and for SBS2008 setup 100Gb for the OS,
> and
> 250Gb for Exchange, and on the Server08 box 100Gb for the OS, and 450Gb
> for
> apps and file storage.
> Does this sound reasonable? A friend suggested to me to do the raid 5 at
> the HW and slice up the disks in each VM, as that is what he does in his
> VM
> environment. But he isn't running Exchange nor SBS2008, so I wanted to
> ask
> the experts.
>
> Thanks for any replies.
>
> Mike
>

You may want to look at using RAID 10 (0+1) if your controller permits it:

http://www.cyberciti.biz/tips/raid5-...rformance.html

--
Allan Williams




Mike wrote:

> Folks,
>
> I did a thread a month or so ago about my new HW and plans to
> virtualize SBS2008 Premium and the Server08 install, and got a lot of
> good advice and plan to start this process in the next week or so.
> I will be doing a SBSMigration from SBS 2003 to SBS 2008.
> One question if I may:
> I bought a server with 24G of RAM and 4-300Gb 10K Disks. My plan is
> to create one big raid 5 HW array and for SBS2008 setup 100Gb for
> the OS, and 250Gb for Exchange, and on the Server08 box 100Gb for the
> OS, and 450Gb for apps and file storage.
> Does this sound reasonable? A friend suggested to me to do the raid
> 5 at the HW and slice up the disks in each VM, as that is what he
> does in his VM environment. But he isn't running Exchange nor
> SBS2008, so I wanted to ask the experts.
>
> Thanks for any replies.
>
> Mike