best RAID solutions for data base server

[jkrause6]

i have a small office environment and want to get a new network workstation. The workstation will be the personal computer for 1 employee and also serve all the other computers (5 others) files from the host. (mostly Microsoft Works files and Quickbooks files). Lots of small file reads and writes.

I like the 250 gig western digital RE3.

Was thinking of getting 2 drives in raid 1. is there any benefit in going to a 3 drive RAID 5?

with a 3 drive raid 5 if 1 drive dies will it still work?

i really want redundancy more than speed but speed is great too.

thanks.

 

[fmw]

The best approach is to use a NAS (network attached storage) for shared files in a peer to peer network. That keeps the files separated from things like the Internet and the internal function of whichever computer you intended to use for the RAID. You can put together a perfectly good NAS using something like the D-Llink DNS 321 and a couple of SATA drives in RAID 1. I have 5 computers here as well on my peer to peer network and I use that very unit. I've used the HP Mediavault in the past but it ran pretty hot and that kept me worried. I use it for backup rather than shared files but that's just the way I manage things around here. It makes a dandy "file server"

You don't need a RAID 5 for a small company. RAID 1 will do just fine. You can buy hard drives all the way up to 1.5 TB so storage capacity limitations wouldn't come into play for any non-governmental database on this planet.

 

[Vipernitrox]

if i were you i wouldn't get a nas i think they're overrated. pc's allow you with much more room for upgrades and expansions. Most of the times a nas doesn't really perform to well either.
Just setup a simple pc and use the internal raid controller (i would advice raid 5).
If you want more speed get a scsi raid controller and some 10k disks or just get some raptors and use the internal raid controller.