A REFERENCE GUIDE FOR OPTIMIZING DELL™ MD1000 SAS SOLUTIONS  VER A00 
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Table 11: OLTP RAID Guidelines 
 
RAID Level 
Application 
Concatenated  0  1  10  5  50 
OLTP 
           
     Recommended   Not Recommended   Possible 
Recommended: 
•  RAID 10 – Since OLTP systems are critical for most business, this RAID configuration is 
highly recommended due to the high availability and redundancy and good performance. 
•  RAID 5 – Recommended for OLTP servers that require maximum storage capacity and 
moderate data protection and performance. 
•  RAID 50 – Recommended for those solutions that require a balance between storage 
capacity and performance.  
Possible: 
•  RAID 1 – Possible solution for situations which do not require high storage capacity. 
Not recommended: 
•  RAID 0, Concatenated - These are not recommended due to lack of redundancy and data 
protection. 
Note: While these configurations are not recommended, they can be configured and utilized 
File Servers 
File servers can be used for file archival or more dynamic storage where files are changed, added 
and deleted on a daily basis. These servers range from workgroup to the corporate level. Storage 
capacity is a key attribute of these servers as users add more and more files. File servers are 
generally not mission critical systems so lower levels of availability and redundancy are acceptable 
as data is usually backed up and can be restored in a matter of hours. 
Archival file server characteristics and recommendations: 
Table 12:  Archival File Server General I/O profile 
 
I/O Profile 
(Read/Write) 
I/O Profile 
(Sequential/Random) 
Bandwidth 
I/O 
Size 
Latency 
Sensitivity 
Growt
h Rate 
Criticality 
90/10  Sequential  Moderate  >64k  High  Varies  Low