Intel S3500 160GB - RAID 1 Hyper-V Server OK?

[Biren78]

I know this is similar to @MiniKnight thread here but I'm doing a hyper-v server node. The plan is:

2x Intel 160GB S3500 drives - Intel SATA RAID 1
3x WD Red 6TB drives (backup vm R1+ hot spare)
5x S3700 400GB (R1 or R10 for data with hot spare)

Has anyone had issues with the S3500's on Intel C602 PCH's? I'm 99.9% confident. Intel server, Intel chipset, Intel SSDs. I know Hyper-V generates many disk writes, but I'd imagine I'm OK with a 160GB drive. They aren't the fastest but RAID 1 should be OK?

Or has anyone seen a bombshell? This server will be 1500 miles away so if something goes bad it'll take 2-3 days to get a replacement in. That's why there is RAID 1 everywhere.

 

[Patrick]

I would not lose sleep over that configuration.

 

[Mike]

No experience with this, but how about Windows softraid instead? I could see it being a bit more flexible, like creating a raid1 and raid0 array on the two disks at the same time.

 

[Biren78]

Why would Windows softraid be better?

 

[Mike]

I don't think it would be better or worse. It seems they can both create logical raid arrays.

 

[Patrick]

I actually use the Intel RAID 1 quite a bit for this type of installation. Windows BSOD = windows raid 1 partition can get out of sync and takes longer to repair.

@Biren78 I did a similar S3500 for a Hyper-V node recently. One other idea is to make only a 130GB volume instead of the 147 you normally can make with the 160GB drives. Still more than enough for hyper-v server 2012 r2 and having a bit of extra space is always good.