Don't take this the wrong way but why is he asking you to come up with
something that you admit you know nothing about? There are a lot of factors
to consider and we don't have enough information to give you the best answer
for your situation. He should contract someone who does know how to get to
the bottom of this so that you make the correct decision and do it right the
first time. But some basics are:

Don't confuse a Logical drive with a Physical drive or array. Creating
multiple Logical drives such as C:, D: & E: on one physical array does
nothing for performance but gives false impressions of files residing on
different drives.

Never use Raid 0 if you are concerned with data loss.

Raid 5 should only be considered if there is mostly Read activity or very
low write activity. Raid 10 is a better choice for data files.

RAID 1 is a starting point for Log files. Heavy systems may need Raid 10

Never mix Log files with Data files. You can get away with adding multiple
log files to a single Raid 1 but never put data files on it.

Use a Raid 1 for the OS and sql binaries. If the usage is low enough you can
usually get by with placing the log files on this array as well.
--
Andrew J. Kelly SQL MVP
Solid Quality Mentors


"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?
>