Remind me again, why not single partition it?

Hi,

The setup:
SBS2003 Premium with (4) 73GB SCSI HD to be configured as RAID10.
Exchange, Sharepoint, & single SQL DB application for approximately 15 users.

The question:
What are the main reasons not to configure as one C: partion? I have seen
many posts saying that it should be done, but not why. Thanks in advance.

 

Probably one of those questions where everyone has an opinion. Mine is:

- You can do a single partition if you wish. I don't see a compelling
reason not to if that's your preference.
- If you do a C for just OS, and later have backup issues (capacity or
time), you can back up C less frequently than the data partition(s) since
it's presumably not changing much.
- If your OS partition runs out of space, you'll have performance issues at
best or server down at worst. If users can't write to C, that's avoided.
- Security. I don't have any shares or other user-accessible data on my
servers' C drives. I don't have to worry about any particular user having
too much access to C, because they don't have any at all.

 

You absolutely can put it all in one large partition. IMO, partitioning
allows you to segregate and control the disk space a biut better. For
example, by putting the Exchange DB in it's on partition, I know not to
ever run a defrag on it. Also, often people will partition their SBS server
because they will physically use different drives --- for example, I use a 2
disk Raid-1 setup for my C: system partition, but put my databases and files
on a 3 or 4 drive Raid-5 setup.

 

Hi Walt,

I'll leave the raid type discussion for someone else.

Partition setups are subjective. Some people like to put all their stuff in
one pile. Some find that they're better organized with one pile for this,
and a second pile for that. Others might even have some kind of piling
*system*. A good bookkeeper might even replace the word pile with the word
file ;-). Even though a filing system may make perfect sense to person who
built it, it's not always that intuitive for another person; hence the word
subjective.

Frankly, you're better off with one pile than you would be if you overthink
the process and make it non-intuitive for everyone - yourself included.
There is an example of overkill in the newsgroup here somewhere. It's not
pretty.

But generally, I think most would accept at least two containers. A c: or
system drive for the operating system and programs, and a d: or data drive
for everything else. It's a natural separation that makes sense, on quite a
few levels.

a) Programs can generally be re-installed, data cannot. This starts you
thinking about data protection and disaster recovery, and the ability to
update your programs independently of that valuable data.

b) Full system drives crash computers. Keeping the 'growth' items separate
offers some protection. A misbehaving or misconfigured application can write
a lot of data in a very short period of time. If you're not johny on the
spot to catch it, you have a crashed box instead of a full data drive.

There's lots of reasons ... these are just two that come to mind - others
may have their favorites to add.

 

ooooh. I forgot a biggie.

Shadow copies - the thing that enables Previous Versions. You want this,
especially for your users share (and it can come in very handy for other
data folders as well). But you don't really want it enabled on your system
drive. Therefore, at least two partitions.

--
Les Connor [SBS Community Member - SBS MVP]
-----------------------------------------------------------
SBS Rocks !
----------------------
"Tell me and I'll forget. Show me and I'll remember. Involve me and I'll
understand." - Confucius

 

Walt,
As one who is a solid proponent of partitioning, here is a very brief
thumbnail. If you are looking for my recommendation on how to best partition,
you can search this List for a previous post I made.

Reasons for a single partition:
- Administrative simplicity. Everything will be in its default location, so
scripts and management can always point to the same place if you either
support multiple installations or a person helps you who supports multiple
installations.

Reasons for multiple partitions:
There are three main reasons - Performance, Maintenance and Fault Tolerance

Performance - Segragating archive files from highly active files which are
modified often can mean less fragmentation overall. The performance argument
against partitioning though is that retrieving files from different
partitions can mean excessive disk head travel. I tend to think though that
deframentation is the greater issue. If your partitions are on different disk
arrays, head travel no longer is an issue.

Maintenance - Related to the reason given for Performance. How long will it
take to defrag today's massively large and growing disks and disk arrays?
Since archive files never fragment, wouldn't it make sense to defrag only
files that need fragmentation and cut your Defragging down to a fraction of
the time required?

Fault Tolerance - Don't put all your eggs in one basket. If a disk or
partition becomes corrupted, you won't lose everything. If you have to
recover and can only access files within the first 8.9gb, you can ensure your
recovery files are stored appropriately.

--
Tony Su
www.su-networking.com
ISA
SBS
Enterprise Mobile Solutions Architect

 

and those four drives in RAID10, I'd rather a 3*RAID5 with a hotspare.

 

Shadow copies ... But you don't really want it enabled on your system

Les:

That's what I always thought (and was told) as well. So I was surprised
the other day when I attended a 2-part SBS2003 Best Practices webcast
featuring (live, on stage!) the Microsoft PSS folks who support SBS.
They specifically recommended turning on shadow copies on the system
volume. Claimed they have recovered AD and Exchange databases using it.

I haven't done it yet, but I'm thinking about it.

Just wanted to pass that along, for whatever it's worth.

-- Owen Williams
ClearView Technology Consulting, LLC

 

.

Yeah, I've played with it, creating a shadow copy - trashing exchange, and
restoring it from a previous version. It worked, but I was told that's 'not
supported' ;-).

Anyway, I'm not sure exactly what the issues are - something to do with
storing copies on a volume other than the one you're shadowing. I don't
recall if it's a perfomance issue, or what.

There's plenty of reading on the matter with a search of the MS site for
those who are wanting to dive deeper, though.