Tuesday 8 January 2013

Hyper-V: Creating a Fixed VHDX on 8x RAID 6 SATA Spindle Set: 130GB

In our last post Hyper-V: Creating a Fixed VHDX on SSD: 40GB Time we saw that a single SSD setup was capable of creating a 40GB fixed VHDX in about 5 minutes.

We have a server setup on the bench that we were running troubleshooting steps on and some component replacements.

  • Intel Server Board S5000PSLSATAR
  • Dual Intel Xeon E5440 CPUs
  • 16GB (8x 2GB) Kingston ECC RAM
  • Intel RAID Controller SRCSASRB
  • Intel SC5400LX Server Chassis with 10 hot swap bays
  • 8x 500GB Seagate ES series 7200RPM SATA drives in RAID 6
  • Windows Server 2012 Datacenter RTM with Hyper-V only

First off, there is no battery backup on this unit so performance is not that great. It is a stop-gap situation for our client.

We started the run at 16:55:

image

We started the process to let it run after we closed up shop.

The file’s final write time was at 19:33:

image

So, in this case with a decent RAID array configuration, though missing the battery backup for the RAID controller’s cache, we saw a 140GB fixed VHDX file created in 2.5 hours or thereabouts.

Next up, we have an Intel Server System R2208GZ4GC with eight 600GB 10K SAS spindles that will be running in RAID 6 with battery backup.

We may just run this experiment on this box twice. Once with RAID 6 and once with RAID 10 to see just how different, if there is any difference, the file creation process will be. And, again with the battery backup removed.

We also have a bunch of Intel X25-M 80GB SSDs here in the shop that we may plug into the above unit to test. Hopefully we will have the time to do all of this!

Philip Elder
MPECS Inc.
Microsoft Small Business Specialists
Co-Author: SBS 2008 Blueprint Book

Windows Live Writer

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