Dell PowerVault MD1120 - Manual (Page 39)

A REFERENCE GUIDE FOR OPTIMIZING DELL™ POWERVAULT™ MD1XXX FAMILY SAS SOLUTION VER A02
PAGE 39 6/16/2008
8. Summary and Conclusions
It is important to understand the characteristics of each storage component in order to assess the
performance of the overall application. It is also necessary to understand how the storage
component is configured since this has a direct impact on the effectiveness of an application. Table
26 summarizes typical storage recommendations for various applications. Recommendations listed
in the table are general conclusions and the actual storage solution may have additional factors
which need to be considered before determining an optimal solution. Additional factors could
include:
• Data and power back-up strategies of an Enterprise IT
• Storage
deployment environment:
o Number of active and passive users
o Type of data – mission critical or non-mission critical
• Storage
deployment budget
• Long term storage consolidation strategy
Table 26: Typical Storage Recommendation for Different Storage Applications
Application Storage Recommendations
Remarks
Servers Key Parameters
RAID Level
PowerVault
MD1000 Host
Controller
Email
Availability
Performance
Scalability RAID 10 provides
both availability
and performance Daisy-chaining
provides capacity
scalability For added
performance enable
Write back cache Recommendation targets
a typical enterprise e-mail
Server
Database
Availability
Performance
RAID 10 provides
both availability
and performance Daisy-chaining
provides capacity
scalability For added
performance enable
Write back cache
Performance
requirements for database
servers depend on
number of users
Web Performance
RAID 0 in Web
Server farms
provides maximum
performance of all
RAID levels
Split Topology
spanning RAID 0
across channels
provides better
performance if
daisy-chaining for
additional capacity
is not required
Enable read ahead
capabilities for
added performance
boost
Web server farms, usually
have multiple servers
providing replicated web
data. Thus, data
availability is handled at
server level
On-line
Transaction
High Availability
RAID 10
provides highest
availability of all
RAID levels
Daisy-chaining
provides capacity
scalability For added
performance enable
Write back cache
Recommendation targets
Enterprise applications
which require higher
availability than
performance.
In general for all OLTP,
data protection is of
utmost importance
File Scalability
RAID 5
maximizing
storage with some
data protection
Daisy-chaining
provides capacity
scalability
Enable Global Hot
Spare for improved
availability for RAID
5
These servers usually
have data backed up
periodically and hence,
require minimum data
protection from storage
components
Streaming
Media
Performance
RAID 0
provides maximum
performance of all
RAID levels
Split Topology
spanning RAID 0
across channels
provides better
performance if
daisy-chaining for
additional capacity
is not required
Enable read ahead
capabilities for
added performance
boost
Performance is of utmost
importance for Streaming
servers. Data on these
servers is usually backed
up on external media such
as tape libraries or optical
media - CD/DVD