Ok here is probably the dumbest thing ever questioned on this forum. I am very much computer literate, but new to web servers, so here is my problem. I have just built a new server, I have three 36.7gig drives in a raid 5 config. I will be installing win200 server later this week and starting to prepare for site hosting. Now as far as the partitions and installing perl and client sites, and anything else e.g. directories you guys/girls can let me know how I should create all this. Anything you can think of would be greatly apprechated...<--think I spelt it wrong, I am very tired. Oh one more thing, if it makes any difference, I will not have a control panel right away...



Regards,
Mike

Never install in the default dir structure - move it to another.

Keep all the sites on a separate partition at least 2 levels down from the root.

Run lockdown before you start putting sites on there.

Get behind a firewall.

I'm a little concerned about the 3 disk drives in a Raid 5 configuration for the following reasons:

o This means that a full 1/3 of all of your disk space won't be available to you (being used for Raid 5 parity.) At this point, you're close to being Raid 1 (mirrored - where 1/2 of your disk space wouldn't be available to you.)

o It also means that you are going to be using Raid 5 to store things [such as log files] that should NEVER be placed on a Raid 5 device because of the performance implications.

Just my random thoughts...

What would be the best way to set up the drives then? I had just thought that with a raid 5 if one drive dies, I can swap it out quick and easy....

Originally posted by eVisionz
What would be the best way to set up the drives then? I had just thought that with a raid 5 if one drive dies, I can swap it out quick and easy....

With three drives, I'm not sure any configuration is "optimal". Yes, with Raid 5 you can swap out a disk easily (I want say quickly because the rebuild of a 36GB drive would be significant [days?] and would impact overall performance.) There are also very large performance issues with Raid 5 with respect to writing.

I would probably make two suggestions:
o Add another disk. That way you are only losing 25% to parity data.
o Make sure you are NOT doing raid 5 via software. You are just asking for data corruption. While those who have talked to me know that I am partial to external storage controllers, you should at a minimum make sure you are using a hardware based Raid 5 array controller card.

I normally like putting the operating system and logs on a small Raid 1 set (using 9GB disk drives or so), and then putting the web serving data on Raid 5. The reasons are as follows:
o Raid 1 rebuilds are much faster and don't impact performance like Raid 5 rebuilds do.
o I am not doing a lot of writes (the log files) to a Raid 5 set.
o The "big" stuff (graphics, flash, music, etc.), which is primarily read data, is now on the Raid 5 set - which is fine. I get the Raid 0 advantages inherent in Raid 5 with very little of the disadvantages.

Disclaimer: My thoughts and opinions are colored by my background in large high availability systems. As such, they may not always be appropriate to smaller setups.