RAID 5

[WhiteD3]

All,

Just starting a new project and the spec calls for a rack server configured as RAID 5.

My understanding is that RAID 5 is no longer recommended. This requirement will no doubt be a copy/paste from an old spec.

Our site servers run MS Server for the OS and an SQL DB that can grow to say 40 GBs.

We would usually go with a SSD for the OS and two 1TB drives in RAID 1 for the DB.

Thoughts, recommends, comments welcome.

[AndyG]

I think you are really want RAID 1 not 0 for redundancy as a minimum

RAID 5 is still popular and my personal favourite, with the right card. I work on the theory of more platters, more heads, better performance and redundancy. You of course have to monitor your drives and make sure they are ok. HP has a proprietary version of RAID 5.
I use RAID 5 with 1 spare drive in the server unused, just in case.
If your after performance SAS rather than SATA
MAybe put your O/S and Application on the SSD and data on the disk, (and a copy oof your application)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RAID

[WhiteD3]

Sorry for the typo. RAID 1

[Bytemrk]

As Andy points out, raid 5 generally gives you read write performance increases as well - especially over raid 1.

All by key servers are set up in at least SAS raid 5 with a hotswap.

A lot will come back to the budget you have and exactly what you are trying to achieve.