I hate to say that but "it depends...".

It depends how often heavily your servers are being used. What your needs
are and the workload on them etc.

If you are asking for the best practices, Operating System and SQL Server
are setup on the same RAID which is RAID1 which will provide you performance
+ redundancy.

System files would not be used frequently (tempdb is an exception and it is
being used more in SQL Server 2005). You can keep them on C: if their sizes
would not grow in huge amounts. I don't know your plans but if tempdb is
going to be used frequently in your environment, then you can keep it on a
RAID0. Which is gonna provide the fastest write performance but without
redundancy, consider this. However, tempdb is going to be used temporarily
so people do not look for redundancy for tempdb. You do not need to seperate
system databases' mdf and ldf files. However, you should backup them when
you make changes in your SQL Server (like creating jobs, configuring linked
servers, creating logins, attaching\detaching databases etc.)

You can keep the log files and data files of your user databases at
different RAIDs. RAID1 would be good for T-Log files and RAID10 (better) or
RAID5 would be OK for *.mdf files.

According to the list below, I could say:
> c: operating system RAID1
> d: data files for all user databases RAID10 \ RAID5
> f: log files for all user databases RAID1
> h: tempdb RAID 0

If you have more than one database (or if you want to devide your VLDB if
there is any) then you could consider locating them to another RAIDs to gain
more performance.

I just tried to tell you the best practices as far as I know. This does not
mean they are just for you and fit to your environment. My purpose is just
to shed a light for you.

I believe my friends will correct me if there is something wrong with my
suggestions.

--
Ekrem Önsoy



"lcerni" <lcerni@discussions.microsoft.com> wrote in message
news:A36B636F-D433-40E6-8EF6-B70AFB929907@microsoft.com...
> Building New Server - What RAID should be used and how to divide the files
> among the disk drives?
>
> Ok. I admit I am completely confused. I am being asked to research for a
> new server. My manager wants to know how many drives are needed depending
> on
> the RAID. Currently our organization is using RAID-5. However, I am not
> sure how to split up the data files and transactional logs.
>
> Should the master, msdb, model data files be on drive e?
> Should the master, msdb, model log files be on drive g?
> Or should each database data file be on its own drive and each database
> log
> file on another drive?
> Or should all the data files be on one drive and the log files on a second
> drive?
> What about tempdb? Should the tempdb data file be on one drive separate
> from the others and its log file on a drive separate from the other log
> files? Also I think that I read that tempdb should be on RAID 0; that it
> can
> be on a separate RAID from the other files? Is this true?
>
> This is an example that I have put together. I don't know how correct/not
> correct it is though.
> c: operating system ?
> d: data files for all user databases ?
> e: data files for all system databases ?
> f: log files for all user databases ?
> g: log files for all system databases ?
> h: tempdb data file RAID 0
> i: tempdb log file RAID 0
>
> He made a remark that he thought that we might need about 16 drives? I am
> not sure I understand the relationship between the drives and RAID. I am
> wondering if I am misunderstanding him.
>
> How do most people have their servers set up?
>
> Are there recommendations which files should be what RAID?
>