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I have an Open-E file server with 8 SAS disks and a MegaRAID 9271-8i controller and I want to configure two logical RAID10 volumes of identical size. One volume has about 66% write access and 33% read access, the other has only write access (it is a mirror of an identical second file server for failover) of about the same amount.

Currently I have selected the first 4 disks and let the LSI controller config wizard create a RAID10 volume using all of the capacity, then doing the same with the remaining disks for the second volume. But I could also select all 8 disks and create the first volume using half of the capacity, then create the second volume using the same disks and the rest of the capacity.

Is there a performance difference of these two configurations? Or do I have to run tests to find this out?

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You may want to test... But in general, hardware RAID controllers that can manage multiple volumes (logical drives, VD's, etc.) are handy in that they will allow the best use of the spindle count available to you. There's also a benefit to reliability.

In short, I'd create an array of all disks and create appropriately-sized volumes within that.

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    +1 - 99% of the time, more spindles is desirable.
    – Rex
    Jun 18, 2014 at 17:10

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