First off, you make no mention of a RAID adapter. If you don't have one,
don't bother with RAID. Software RAID is, at best, a bad idea.....

Next, if you do have (or get one), you do realize that all the data on
any drives being put in a RAID array will have their data completely
wiped out? Better have good backups before you try anything....

With 4 drives, total, you don't have many options. RAID 1 requires a
minimum of 2 drives, RAID 5 requires 3 and RAID 10 requires 4. Either
everything on a RAID 10 or two RAID 1 arrays. OS, Log and programs files
on the boot drive and databases on the second.

Ideally, you should have at least 3 RAID arrays. RAID 1 for the OS and
program files, RAID 1 for the log files and RAID 10 for the databases.

If you choose multiple RAID arrays, it's important that they are on
separate channels. If they share a channel, you lose a lot of the gains
in performance by pushing everything through a single channel.....

BTW, It's not a good idea to have Exchange and SQL on the same server.
Each wants everything for itself. At the very least it is going to
require a lot of careful tuning to get it to work efficiently....


Regards,
Hank Arnold

JTL wrote:
> i posted a related question a few days ago and have since upgraded my
> hardware- im hoping to set up my server with the optimal RAID configuration
> for our limited means- we have a shiny-new dell poweredge 2950 server with
> four, 400GB SATA drives. it is running windows server 2003 R2 Enterprise
> x64 and SQL Server 2005 Enterprise x64.
>
> this server will be hosting a sql server database that has an 80GB data file
> which will slowly grow over time. data redundancy is important since this
> machine will be our main data server, however we do have means to rebuild
> our database if we were to lose it- our data is updated just once a day via
> a data import task. i would say that processing power is equally as
> important to us as data redundancy, if not more important.
>
> i am leaning toward a RAID 10 configuration, but being quite the newbie at
> this, i'd love to hear your recommendations.
>
> is it possible to use a combination of RAID levels? for example, i was
> playing with idea of configuring RAID 1 for two of the drives, which would
> store the OS and SQL log files. then configure RAID 0 for the remaining 2
> drives, which would store the SQL data files. but would i need more
> hardware (like a RAID connector/controller??) to do this? and would this be
> better than just throwing all disks into a RAID10 array?
>
> anyways- any and all is much appreciated-
>
> thanks!
>
> JTL
>
>