Dell PowerVault MD1120 - Manual (Page 30)

A REFERENCE GUIDE FOR OPTIMIZING DELL™ POWERVAULT™ MD1XXX FAMILY SAS SOLUTION VER A02
PAGE 30 6/16/2008
Application-Specific Guidelines
E-Mail Servers
The storage requirements for e-mail servers can vary depending on the size, the amount, and the
type of users. While small departmental e-mail servers may work well with a small amount of
storage and limited features; large corporate e-mail servers normally require greater storage
capacity, very high availability, performance, and scalability. I/O profiles will vary depending on the
number of users and type of mail and attachments sent.
Table 8: Email Server General I/O profile
I/O Profile
(Read/Write) I/O Profile
(Sequential/Random)
Bandwidth
I/O
Size Latency
Sensitivity Growth
Rate
Criticality
60/40 Random Heavy 4k High High High
Table 9: Email Server RAID Guidelines
Recommended Not Recommended Possible
Recommended:
• RAID 10 – Recommended for mission-critical e-mail servers where availability and
redundancy and/or performance are the highest priority and where reduced storage
capacity is acceptable.
• RAID 5 – Recommended for e-mail servers that require maximum storage capacity and
moderate data protection and performance.
• RAID 50 – Recommended for those solutions that require greater redundancy and data
protection and a balance between storage capacity and performance.
• RAID 6 – Recommended for e-mail servers that require maximum storage capacity and
enhanced data protection and moderate performance.
• RAID 60 – Recommended for those solutions that require greater redundancy and data
protection and a balance between storage capacity and performance.
Possible:
• RAID 1 – Possible solution for small e-mail servers which do not require high storage
capacity.
Application
RAID Level
0 1 10 5 50 6 60
E-Mail