Best Raid configuration

  • What is the best raid configuration for a data warehouse (90/10 read-write ratio)? Right now we have a compaq SAN and everything is raid 5. I'm thinking about moving static reporting databases (updated monthly) and tempdb to raid 0 arrays. We're a little strapped for money so mirroring is out of scope. Any ideas on best practices? Do's and dont's? Horror stories?

    Thanks in advance.

  • quote:


    What is the best raid configuration for a data warehouse (90/10 read-write ratio)? Right now we have a compaq SAN and everything is raid 5. I'm thinking about moving static reporting databases (updated monthly) and tempdb to raid 0 arrays. We're a little strapped for money so mirroring is out of scope. Any ideas on best practices? Do's and dont's? Horror stories?

    Thanks in advance.


    Gregory Larsen, DBA

    If you looking for SQL Server Examples check out my website at http://www.geocities.com/sqlserverexamples

    Gregory A. Larsen, MVP

  • Sorry about that blank post. Of course you understand raid0 will give you no fault tolerance. Also the raid 5 will only slow down your performance when you are building the database warehouse and doing updates. With stripped data on RAID5 you should get fairly good read performance since all spindles are busy returning your data, where as without stripping only a single disk head will be returning data. RAID 0 of course should will provide you faster updates since the parity bits do not need to be calculated and written. Of course you already know this. I think I would stay with the raid 5, or find some more dollars (disks) to do mirroring.

    Gregory Larsen, DBA

    If you looking for SQL Server Examples check out my website at http://www.geocities.com/sqlserverexamples

    Gregory A. Larsen, MVP

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