What is best way to setup MSA1510i iSCSI for W2k3 and Linux DB servers?

Question

Assuming one shelf of 14 drives (12 active, 2 spare). Will use RAID 1+0 for performance and data protection.

If two databases are going to be fairly heavy with mixed reads and writes, is creating two pools of 6 drives better than one pool of 12 drives?

This isn't like a server where you can potentially choose a variety of I/O controllers for the SCSI interface. This is a SAN system and the SCSI I/O interface is the one they give you.

The disks are all 300 gb 10k RPM HP u320 scsi drives.

Assuming equal work loads of activity on the two active databases, it would seem there would be benefit to having them split across two different arrays. If the work loads were not identical, and possibly had minimal overlap, then I can see how all disks in one array would be beneficial.

I was hoping to find more about mixed loads, where there are periods of extended high levels activity on one of the databases, during which there would be shorter periods of high levels of activity on the other database hitting at the same time.

Ideally I'd have more than one shelf on the SAN and split data loads across shelves and I/O modules, but that's not an option at the moment. I'm trying to come up with the most efficient use of what is available.

Ideas?

Answer 1

I fully understand your question, but there are a lot of variables to this like the raid controller and drive specs. I would get with the manufacturer for that one and not even try to answer. My guess (only a guess) is the single pool will be easier to manage and direct traffic to/from, but if you have a LOT of read/writes this feature may be its own downfall.

Ask the manufacturer...