Best SQL Server Configuration with this hardware.

Posted by DavidStein on Super User See other posts from Super User or by DavidStein
Published on 2011-03-11T16:28:17Z Indexed on 2011/03/14 16:14 UTC
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raid

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sql-server

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sql-server-2008-r2

I just received my new SQL Server from Dell. The server will be serve approximately 15 OLTP databases which average 10GB in size.

Here are the basic specs:

Dell PowerEdge R510 with up to 12 Hot Swap HDDs,LED
Intel Xeon E5649 2.53GHz, 12M Cache, 5.86 GT/s QPI, 6 core (Quantity of 2)
48GB Memory (6x8GB), 1333MHz Dual Ranked RDIMMs for 2 Processors, Optimized
PERC H700 Integrated RAID Controller, 1GB NV Cache
300GB 15K RPM SA SCSI 6Gbps 3.5in Hotplug Hard Drive (Quantity of 4)
600GB 15K RPM SA SCSI 6Gbps 3.5in Hotplug Hard Drive (Quantity of 6)

My first thought was to use 3 arrays.

OS - Raid 1 - (2)300GB
T-Log - Raid 1 (2)300GB
DB - Raid 5 (5) 600GB
Backup - (1) 600GB - non-raided.

However, I could also do the following after purchasing one more drive for backup.
OS and T-Log - Raid 10 - (4)300GB
DB - Raid 10 (6)600GB

The hard drive space is not an issue as the databases are not that large. I'm just trying to optimize the speed of the applications using these databases.

So, what would you guys recommend?

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