February 26, 2004 at 9:15 am
Are there any forum members out there who are using a HP StorageWorks Enterprise Virtual Array 5000 to provide storage for multiple servers running SQL 2000 ?
I would appreciate some advice on disk group sizes, location of disks for disk groups, or anything else you can think of. I've just started working for a new company with databases over 400GB in size. These are stored on just one disk group of 168 disks ! This contravenes the accepted wisdom of locating database files, transaction log files, tempdb, non-clustered indexes, etc. on logically & physically separate LUNs. There is of course the added complication of storage virtualization on this SAN. My first idea would be to create disk groups of 24 disks, 2 from each shelf, giving 1.7TB of VRaid 1 storage. Please feel free to pick holes in this strategy !
Kind Regards
Andy Pike
February 27, 2004 at 1:03 pm
The database and log files should be on separate arrays / raid volumes. There is no exception to that rule. But, I usually place all my indexes (clus and non-clus) on the single large volume, the reason being if you place clustered indexes on one half and the non clustered on the other half, and if your queries use more of one or the other than the other half is sitting idle. Imagine your queries use clustered indexes more often than the non-clustered indexes, than the spindles of the non clustered index volume are sitting idle. It is almost impossible to balance the load on the volumes.
February 28, 2004 at 11:59 am
Used SAN's for multiple servers etc. A SAN should be viewed as for any storage for SQL Server and as pointed out should follow the normal rules. Certainly the logs and datafiles should go onto seperate arrays, preferably of dedicated spindles. The issue I have with SAN allocation is that the spindles may be shared amongst drives thus maybe giving monitoring and performance issues. As to how many drives you need and how you split them depends as always on the use of your database and its structure. If tempdb is active then placing it on a seperate array may prove beneficial, as may splitting data across multiple arrays. As always raid 10 is preferable over raid 5 for data and your log drives should be raid 1.
You may want to consider data partitioning if you have performance issues.
[font="Comic Sans MS"]The GrumpyOldDBA[/font]
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