System drive for Windows Server 2012 R2 (VM Host)

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katit

Member
Mar 18, 2015
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I'm building VM Host and plan to use separate drive (not mirrored or anything) for System drive.

I picked up cheap Intel S3500 80Gb and plan on using it on SATA2 port.

Questions I have (not sure)
1. Is 80Gb enough? From what we have on current servers looks like plenty enough. Just for OS and Backup software..
2. Max read is 340Mb on those SSDs. SATA2 limit 300Mb, not much to loose, but main question is.. How much Win 2012 server actually needs to read and write? VMs will be on faster disks on SATA3, but I just want to make sure this system drive will not be a bottleneck
 

katit

Member
Mar 18, 2015
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Don't get a sandisk extreme- I've had 3 fail on me (out of 4)
I use them for testing and such, but definitely won't use it for server drive. I cleaned up thread because person pulled his messages and now my responses don't make sense. Original question remains..
 

Deslok

Well-Known Member
Jul 15, 2015
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The s3500 should be fine I use one for my storage severs boot drive, albiet a larger model, it'll be tight but should be ok. Without heavy io any good drive it's fine for booting widows server even older ones like Intel 320/710 drives
 

DavidRa

Infrastructure Architect
Aug 3, 2015
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Central Coast of NSW
www.pdconsec.net
There shouldn't be heavy IO on the system disk for a Hyper-V server. It'll be used at boot, installing patches, and that's about all.

For comparison, I tend to have a pair of notebook drives for system disks on my home servers, including Hyper-V hosts - since those hosts should be Server Core, there's not much in the way of boot IO anyway.
 

katit

Member
Mar 18, 2015
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Just to document my findings. Basically, between SATA2 and SATA3 not much difference in speeds for S3500 drives. For my scenario I don't think any difference can be noticed. For small random read/writes they are the same. Top is SATA 3, bottom is SATA 2. Write speeds is pretty much identical.
Screen Shot 2016-07-07 at 9.00.43 PM.png
 

Diavuno

Active Member
I recall having to fix server 2000\2003 partitions... I won't use under 120gb.

For boot speed isn't really a huge issue, the S3500 is fine, and I often use them. For cheaper options I like the OCS Trion. I've only had a single bad one... Out of all my clients.

Sent from my Lenovo TAB 2 A10-70F using Tapatalk
 

cheezehead

Active Member
Sep 23, 2012
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Midwest, US
60GB would work fine for hyper-v boot volume.

Really watching what they are doing with Nano....could get away with 4GB sata dom's for hyper-v hosts if they actually developed it enough which would be sweet.