What is the right stripe size?

Question to the Storage Advisors: I have a really nice HP server to install exchange 2010 into. it is running ms server 2008 r2. it is a HP DL 370 G6 with 16-146 gb drives. they are attached to a P410i raid controller with 512 mb of cashe having both acceleration and battery backup setup. i have 12 gigs of ram to support the Quad x5550 @ 2.67 ghz processors. I gathered from research that raid 50 is a good choice for exchange, expecially with 16 SAS 10k drives to use so i think that will be how i setup but, am i hearing that 64k is the perfect size for exchange to use? and am i hearing that Windows server 2008 r2 (64bit) doesn’t really care as long as the size is big? thanks in advance for any wisdom or insight.

Steve … the argument of correct stripe size has raged long and hard, and in reality I can’t answer your specific question on the HP RAID card because I’m not an expert on that product. However, if this was an Adaptec controller (such as 51645) then I’m be answering … use the defaults.

While there is credibility in doing the maths and trying to match the stripe size to the OS/application requirements, the reality is that the defaults will “normally” walk all over specifying a particular size. Why? Because our engineers spend a lot of time in making the defaults work best. We aim to make an out-of-the-box experience for the majority of users, and put a lot of effort into making the product work without a user having to be a rocket scientist to use it.

Therefore (if this was an Adaptec product) you can try 64kb, but if I was a better man I’d still go with a few bucks on the defaults (256kb).

In re-reading this … yes RAID 50 is a great way to go on this system. It will be a good compromise of performance, capacity and redundancy. RAID 10 would be very, very fast but a little too expensive for most user’s tastes on those drives.

Ciao
Neil