Well here I go, many nights of research! Your opinion is needed!

[SunnyD]

No harm done. I realized after posting the build looks more like a gaming pc. I am negotiating with dell. Looking at server models t310 or t410 with 1 xenon, sas raid 5 or raid 50 or raid 10? I cant decide! Also getting 3 years 7x24, 4hr response, pro support. The warranty(insurance) is a almost much as the server! Anybody have any suggestions on the raid 5, 50 or 10? Leaning towards raid 5 or 10, because 50 requires 6 hard disks minimum and complexity. Thoughts? Also many thanks to Jimbo for the help!

j

You want RAID 10. Stripe for speed, mirror for redundancy. I can tell you now, you may get lucky and never have to service the system, but if you do end up needing to, you'll be much happier having someone else responsible for doing it and shouldering the blame if something were to go terribly wrong.

 

[modestninja]

You want RAID 10. Stripe for speed, mirror for redundancy. I can tell you now, you may get lucky and never have to service the system, but if you do end up needing to, you'll be much happier having someone else responsible for doing it and shouldering the blame if something were to go terribly wrong.

It depends if the database is going to be write heavy, if so then RAID 10 vastly outperforms RAID 5. If the database is mainly reads, then RAID 5 could save you some money and still give you good performance.

 

[bigj91]

The hard disks are 4-450GB, 15K RPM, Serial Attached SCSI as the storage drive, from dell. The database will be running either C-tree or microsoft SQL. Then i plan on buying a Intel Ssd-x-25m 160gb as the OS(windows 2008 32bit) drive. A WD 2TB RE4 to back all of this up using Symantec Backup Exec? Also another esata external hardrive for offsite backup?

 

[KamiXkaze]

Like most have said no DIY just go to HP I would have said Dell, but my company had to many dead Dell's, and then they did the switch to HP which solve the problem.

KxK

 

[sonoran]

RAID 5 plus a good backup strategy, with the support option you've specified, should prevent any data disasters.

 

[Eddie313]

Really it all depends on if you know what your doing when building a server.

Don't take this wrong but if you asking people here on what to build, then you really should not be building a server. If its data critical you need to be contacting a company to order a server. Or even talking to a IT consulting firm.

Just my two cents, I have built Raid servers/mass storage servers That have been running for over 5 years now. Might look good on paper but something fails/data loss its going to be on you.

 

[jae]

Forget Dell, go HP.