SirEvan Posted January 8, 2013 Share Posted January 8, 2013 After having an issue with my RAID-5 array recently, that resulted in only 1 lost file, I decided it was time to finally upgrade. Going from 8x 2TB drives in RAID 5, I decided to move to a RAID 6 array, starting with 6x 3TB drives. The RAID 6 will allow me to have better resiliency if a drive dies, but I'm still planning on keeping not only a hot spare around, but a separate 3TB backup drive for critical files that will get backed up to nightly. So my question is now, how best to partition my new server. I use it for the following: 1.) Hyper-V VM host (~300GB) ?ADDC Exchange 2010 Linux Anti spam/virus/phishing filter in front of exchange Apache web server subsonic media streamer various other vms 2.) TV show / Movie repository for streaming to XBMC (~7TB) 3.) SVN Server for code/Electronic schematics/board files/gerbers (~80MB) and a few other things. The RAID 6 array has a 64KB stripe size, and while it currently has 6x3TB drives, I bought a new case and 4 5-in-3 drive cages to allow me to increase it to 20 3TB (or 4TB in the future) drives. Should I: 1.) Create one large array, then partition it into separate drives 2.) Create smaller RAID 6 arrays (or possibly RAID-1 arrays for critical stuff) 3.) Create multiple, different type arrays for each specific function above My requirements would be that if necessary, I should be able to expand a volume if it needs more space (in windows drive manager), and that when space runs out, be able to easily add in and expand the array(s) with new drives. I am familiar with OCE, but im not sure if I can span different arrays on same drives (say a 4TB RAID 6 array, spanning 5x 3TB drives, plus a 4TB RAID-1 array on those same 5 drives). Ideally I'd prefer separate partitions/arrays, so that I can specify different block/strip sizes (SVN stuff is usually small, so say 32 or 64KB for that, whereas TV and movies are usually several gigabytes, so maybe a 512 or 1024KB strip for those). Anyone have any recommendations? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
SirEvan Posted January 10, 2013 Author Share Posted January 10, 2013 so FWIW,I decided to do the following: I bought a SAS expander and several 5-in-3 cages, and will do the following config: 1.) 4x3TB in RAID-5 + 1 x 3TB Hotspare for movies and TV shows 2.) use 2 of my old 2TB drives to do a RAID-1 array for my SVN, photography, website, etc. 3.) grab 4x1TB, or possibly 4 of the 2TB drives I had and do a 0+1 for my Hyper-V VMs. This way I can always plug in extra drives and either expand, migrate, etc, and I've got extra slots so I can put in other backups. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TPreston Posted January 10, 2013 Share Posted January 10, 2013 For the videos use refs or ntfs with 64k clusters Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
SirEvan Posted January 10, 2013 Author Share Posted January 10, 2013 For the videos use refs or ntfs with 64k clusters Yeah, originally i was trying to figure out how to best strip a single raid array for multiple uses, but I think it's better to do multiple arrays on the controller, then use something like: 512KB/1MB strip for the video content (64KB REFS) 32KB-64KB strip for SVN/photography(NTFS) 128-256KB strip for Hyper-V vms (64KB REFS system) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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