Hi everyone.First question would be, for a company with 50 users, 50% being very light most likley what RAID configuration would you use for the database array? Still a RAID 5, or RAID1 / RAID 10?Also If you build a Vitual Server using Hypr V to house a DC andExch server for the same amount of users what configuration?Raid 1 - host OSRaid 1 - Guests OSRaid 5 - 2 VHD for Exch databae and some light file storage?Thanks.

First two are fine how ever i will go for RAID 1+0 for VHD for Exch databae and some light file storage(if i can afford to waste some HDD for redundency)Raj

Would there be much of a negative to using the RAID 5? Cost wise it will save some money, and there shouldn't be much for data in either email or standard files. Most users will be using office documents like word or excel. 40 - 50% of the email users will be accessing their email one at a time from a common workstation. This would leave 25-30 users who are using the server throughout the day for light email and some document storage.2 x 722 x 1463 x 146Was going to be the configuration by the way.

RAID 1+0 has the best read performance, the best write performance, and the best fault tolerance. RAID 5can work where users have large mailboxes, it's likely that the IOPS load of your users per disk is going to be relatively low (generally, users with big mailboxes don't tend to open more mail than users with small mailboxes, so your disks will be less utilized [per gigabyte] So you need to decide on this.Raj