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Aaron Weiker
Asked: 2009-06-24 20:04:05 +0800 CST

What RAID level do you use on SharePoint databases?

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When configuring the storage for your SharePoint databases what RAID level do you use?

The scenario I'm looking for is for a medium to large farm. What I'm interested in is how the different workloads that you can do affect the choices that you make.

sql-server sharepoint

3 Answers

  1. Best Answer

    Excellent question... the official Microsoft White Paper on this topic is here: Planning and Monitoring SQL Server Storage for Office SharePoint Server: Performance Recommendations and Best Practices. It is written by Bill Baer, an Architect on the Microsoft Online Services, Hosted SharePoint team (who knows his stuff inside and out).

    You happen to have VERY good timing, however, as Russ Houberg just updated his SharePoint Storage Architecture white paper today. Between the two, you will have everything you need to know about planning storage for SharePoint.

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  2. It's generally considered poor form to host any database on RAID5, partly due to the large writing overheads that it incurs. Normally RAID 1 or RAID 10 for any database volumes should be considered wherever practical.

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  3. Databases which are mostly write should be placed on RAID 10 to avoid the write penalty of RAID 5.

    However databases which are going to be mostly read such as archive databases, configuration databases, etc should be placed on RAID 5 to get the most for your money from the storage solution.

    What sort of storage will you use using? SAN, DAS, etc? The more details the better.

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