Best way to configure server RAID/HBA cards?

[leagle]

I just purchased a BR10i and a M1015 on ebay. I'd appreciate some advice on the best way to set them up in my Server 2008 R2 box.

Here's the current configuration:

Win 2008 R2 w/Hyper-V
SM X8SIL-F
i3-530
8GB DDR3
Chenbro RM31408 chassis

Right now, I am using the on-board ICH RAID to mirror my OS drive. I'm also storing my VHDs on that OS drive. And then I have three additional drives that are passed through to a WHS VM. All drives are currently plugged into the mobo SATA ports.

With the cards I just purchased, I was thinking of flashing the BR10i to IT firmware to use as an HBA so that I could add more drives to my VMs. I was also planning to leave the M1015 as a RAID card and maybe use it to mirror my OS drives, thereby avoiding the on-board ICH controller. I haven't had any problems with the on board controller, but I am thinking that I will see a significant performance increase by switching to a hardware controller. Is that a sound idea or should I just keep using the ICH for my OS drives and find a better use for the M1015? I could maybe use the M1015 to set up a striped array to hold my VHDs. Would the M1015 and BR10i coexist in the same system?

Basically, I am curious as to how you would set up this system with these components to maximize performance and uptime. I have a stand alone back-up server that mirrors everything nightly (and off-site solutions that aren't worth going into here), so redundancy isn't a big concern for me. However, avoiding unexpected downtime is very important.

I know that is a lot of questions and I appreciate any and all responses.

Thanks.

 

[Patrick]

I actually like the ICH RAID 1 for OS drives. There are some issues like when you want to install OpenSolaris that does not support ICH10R RAID. On the pass-through stuff, either is pretty good. I am currently testing the M1015 and I think that odditory has a bunch of them that he is working with. Doing disk pass-through to Server 2008 R2 and Hyper-V is super easy. This weekend I can try the M1015 and the BR10i in the same system if you want, but I have had the BR10i and LSI 9211-8i in the same system without issue so I am guessing there will be no problems.

How do you like that Chenbro RM31408?

 

[PigLover]

The ICHx-R raid plays very nicely with MS products (XP, Win7, Server-2008, etc).

Using the ICH for a small raid (1 or 5) for the OS drive of a Hyper-V host and virtuals for the guests is an outstanding config. You will not see any materiel increase in system performance by moving the host drives to a higher performance disk (unless, of course, you are running applications on the Hyper-V host, which VM best practices advises against anyway). I would not move away from it.

Use your hardware raid controller for data drives passed through to your guests.

If using a virtual hard drive for one of the Guest OS drives becomes a performance bottleneck then that guest probably shouldn't be using vhd for its OS anyway - give them a dedicated disk for the guest OS. This might happen for a memory intensive guest that pages a lot or if they host something like mySQL on the guest OS drive.

 

[leagle]

Thanks so much for the advice, guys. I decided to keep using the ICH Raid 1 for my OS drives. In an effort to isolate the OS drives, I decided to switch from 1 TB drives to 320 GB F4 Samsungs. There's no good and easy way to change your OS drive to a smaller drive, so i ended up exporting all of my VMs to a spare drive, completely reinstalling Server 2008 R2 on the new drives, and then importing the VMs. I have to give Microsoft credit because it could not have been any easier.

Now, I'm using a separate 1 TB drive for my VHDs. I figured that even if I don't see a performance gain, it will be nice to have more space and some segregation from the OS drives. All that's left to do is to flash my BR10i to the IT firmware, install it, and move my data disks over to it. I'm still waiting on some full-height brackets for the BR10i to arrive, but they should arrive shortly. I found a pre-made disk image that someone on [H] made for flashing LSI cards, so I will give that a try first.

How do you like that Chenbro RM31408?

It is a high quality case and I got it for almost nothing off of ebay. I have two Norco cases and there is a noticeable difference in build quality between them and the Chenbro. But, of course, the Chenbro is probably 4X the price when bought new, so that's to be expected. It is my only 3u case, so finding decent aftermarket CPU coolers that fit can be a challenge. My one complaint is that the trays for the backplane require a very specific screw that is hard to find and I don't have enough of them. Also, I'd be happier if the trays had some sort of lock, but they are designed so that you can't really open them by accident, so it isn't a huge deal. And, as with most server cases, the fans that came with it were louder than a 747, but that was an easy fix. Overall, I am very happy with it.