RAID 5 for SQL SERVER 2016 AND WINDOWS OS

Question

Hello,

Can we implement RAID 5 architecture on a machine running Windows Server 2016 and SQL Server 2016 Standard edition with 3 SATA SSD's, 1TB each.

The application demands 5 user defined databases. Everyday, around 350 Mb of data is pushed in the user defined databases.

If yes, how should the database administration be carried out for this particular configuration and data size?

Answer 1

Can we implement RAID 5 architecture on a machine running Windows Server 2016 and SQL Server 2016 Standard edition with 3 SATA SSD's, 1TB each.

Yes you can. Whether it is a good choice for your application is nothing I want to speculate about.

If yes, how should the database administration be carried out for this particular configuration and data size?

More or less the same way as you would with any other configuration.

This is a write intensive application. Also, there is capping on the budget. Please suggest.

Admittedly, defining the hardware configuration for a system is not my expertise, but your questions are far too open-ended and vague for it be possible to give any precise answers anyway.

Answer 2

This is a write intensive application. Also, there is capping on the budget. Please suggest.

Answer 3

SQL Server simply uses the logical drives Windows presents to the application. SQL Server does not have any knowledge of RAID levels or physical disk drives.

For questions about your specific hardware, I suggest you talk to the hardware vendor.

Answer 4

Hi HrishikeshLele-1582,

In addition, please check out the recommendations in the https://techcommunity.microsoft.com/t5/sql-server-blog/sql-server-drive-configurations/ba-p/383688 which might be helpful.

Best Regards,
Amelia

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Answer 5

Thanks for writing, Tom, Erland and Amelia! As my question is vague and open ended, I would like to elaborate on the same -

BACKGROUND -

In the first job we have supplied -
A DELL Poweredge T30 entry level server to a client on April 2021 for a bio pharma application. This business application consumes ~350 Mb of data per day. The data is stored and distributed in user defined SQL SERVER 2014 Express databases.

The DELL server has 8GB RAM, 1TB HDD's (2 qty, RAID 1 configured) and other HDD (1 qty) for database backups. Also, SQL SERVER 2014 EXPRESS edition server is running.

The DELL server has 2 logical drives configured on RAID 1 (C:\ and D:) and 1 physical drive for database backups (E:)

All the database files (Data, log and tempdb) are stored on the D:\ drive , distributed in respective folders.

We have created views in the SQL SERVER management s/w to convert the tabular data into the required formats. The data from views is consumed by the SQL SERVER Reporting Services for the production batch reports.

CONCERN -

After 8 months of production use, it takes a lot of time to fetch the batch reports, historical graphs from the SQL SERVER Views. The work around that we carried out was to backup and delete data from the user defined databases after every 3 months. (Not a solution we are looking for in future projects)

And surprisingly, there are other vendor machines with Windows XP, SQL Server 2008 R2, 500GB RAID 5 HDD's, 4 GB RAM, consuming ~350Mb of data per day and working very fine and uninterrupted since the last 15 years.

To address this concern, it appears that we need more expertise in data structuring or the database administration, or both.

So I questioned the following -

Since reading the data is taking a lot of time, from the data structuring angle whether we can -

1. Implement strategies like table partitioning, database shrinking?
2. Implement stored procedures to improve performance? Does it really help?
3. Archive data files in SQL SERVER 2016? How much does the archiving really help?

From the administration part, I was thinking on the following -

1. Whether RAID 5 should be implemented?
2. Whether SATA or Enterprise level SSD's should be used with RAID 5 disk architecture (1 TB each) ?
3. Whether to use a higher RAM (32 or 64 GB) for the server?

This was my first big business application. Going ahead, I want to implement a database management system (with SQL SERVER 2016 Standard edition) in the DELL Server (not yet decided) that will deliver hassle free experience to the client.

Please advice.