Server 2003 Partition [Resolved]

[RobDog888]

I am installing Server 2003 and I have a 40 Gig drive. Should I
allocate all 40 Gigs for the system partition or sub divide it into
two 20 Gig partitions (or some percentage). I will be installing
Exchange 2003 after I am done with this and I know Exchange
needs some decent space. Or should I just get another hd for
Exchange, like 80 Gigs or so?

Thanks for any assistance on this.

[dglienna]

I'd give it a bit more than what it suggests for its partition. Use the rest for data. This will make backups easier, also if you need to do a re-install. Always allow a bit more than needed for upgrades/patches.

same for Exchange. Doesn't matter if it's on the same drive, though.

[RobDog888]

I dont have any suggested size. What does m$ recommend for size?
I am at the screen where its asking to create a partition to install
it into.

Thanks

[Dave Sell]

It makes you "micromanage" your system more, but I beleive its worth it to split up a drive into 2 halves. The filesystem can be seperated into system files (mostly reads) and a work half (commonly updated files).

Your system half will run alot better this way. Esp. if you place the swap file on the second partition.

[dglienna]

The following are the minimum requirements to install Windows Small Business Server 2003 Standard Edition:
A Pentium II 300-megahertz (MHz)-or-compatible processor
256 megabytes (MB) of random access memory (RAM)
4 gigabytes (GB) of available hard disk space
A CD-ROM or a DVD-ROM drive
A network adapter from the Microsoft Windows Server 2003 Hardware Compatibility List (HCL)
A video graphics adapter from the Windows Server 2003 HCL that can support 256 colors and a resolution of 800 by 600 dots per inch (dpi)
A dedicated Class 1 fax modem if you want to use the fax service or the dial-up remote access feature
The following are the recommended hardware requirements to install Windows Small Business Server 2003 Standard Edition:
A Pentium III 550-MHz-or-compatible processor
384 MB of RAM (maximum RAM supported is 4 GB)
Two or more mirrored 4-GB hard disks
The following are the minimum requirements to install Windows Small Business Server 2003 Premium Edition:
A Pentium II 300-MHz-or-compatible processor
256 MB of RAM
5 GB of available hard disk space
A CD-ROM or a DVD-ROM drive
A network adapter from the Windows Server 2003 HCL
A video graphics adapter that can support 256 colors and a resolution of 800 by 600 dpi from the Windows Server 2003 HCL
A dedicated Class 1 fax modem if you want to use the fax service, the dial-up remote access feature, or the Microsoft Internet Security and Acceleration (ISA) Server dial-up service
The following are the recommended hardware requirements to install Windows Small Business Server 2003 Premium Edition:
A Pentium III 550-MHz-or-compatible processor
512 MB of RAM (maximum RAM supported is 4 GB)
Two or more mirrored 5-GB hard disks

looks like they both require small mirrored drives.

[RobDog888]

Well, I know we have Small Business Server 2003 installed at
work on our development server and it does not have mirrored
drives, but I am only installing Server 2003 not Small Business. I
am considering installing to all of the 40 gigs as my C drive and I
will get another drive for when I install Exchange. Two physically
separate drives on two separate controllers. Second drive of 80
gigs or more for Exchange should be good enough. Its going to
take me another week to get the free time to install Exchange
anyways so I might as well order another drive. Would the 40 gig
system drive be wastefull?

Btw: I am installing all this on a P4 1.7 socket 423 w/768 Mgbs of
RD 800 RAM system.

Thanks.

[Dave Sell]

Originally posted by RobDog888
Well, I know we have Small Business Server 2003 installed at
work on our development server and it does not have mirrored
drives, but I am only installing Server 2003 not Small Business. I
am considering installing to all of the 40 gigs as my C drive and I
will get another drive for when I install Exchange. Two physically
separate drives on two separate controllers. Second drive of 80
gigs or more for Exchange should be good enough. Its going to
take me another week to get the free time to install Exchange
anyways so I might as well order another drive. Would the 40 gig
system drive be wastefull?

Btw: I am installing all this on a P4 1.7 socket 423 w/768 Mgbs of
RD 800 RAM system.

Thanks.

Drive1: System
Drive2: Data

Sounds perfect! Even better put the SWAP file on the second disk and not on the 1st disk at all for added performance.

[RobDog888]

Will that interfere or hinder performance for Exchange which
will be on the D drive?

[Ideas Man]

Shouldn't do. If anything, moving the swapfile should increase performance a little if the second drive is faster than the system. The moving the swapfile trick would really only offer performance increases if it was used as a workstation i'd say, because most of it runs in the background, the performance increase wouldn't be that flash.

[Dave Sell]

Well the trick is to put the swapfile on the second drive and set it to a large value. That way, it starts out as a large, contiguous block and stays that way. If it does grow larger than the initial block of space, then it will interfere with whatever normally runs on that drive.

Ideally swap files exist on their own partition with nothing else.

[plenderj]

Originally posted by Dave Sell
Your system half will run alot better this way. Esp. if you place the swap file on the second partition.

Swap file performance will only increase if they're on seperate drives

[Dave Sell]

Originally posted by plenderj
Swap file performance will only increase if they're on seperate drives

Unless that second drive is used heavily as in the case of a large Exchange Server or Web Server... Where file creation/deletion and/or growth is frequent.

[RobDog888]

That is what I have been wondering about. I also forgot to
mention that I want to install SQL 2000 on a third drive. So, I will
have the OS running IIS on primary master drive 40 g's on
controller1. Slave cdrom on controller1. Then I will have SQL 2000
on secondary master drive 80 g's on controller2 and Exchange
2003 as secondary slave on another 80 g's drive also on
controller2. This should give me best performance between os to
sql on separate controllers and os to exchange on separate
controlers.

So, now where should the swap file be located?

[Dave Sell]

Ideally:

System Files: [C Drive] 40Gb Split into 2 partitions:
- [C Drive] Static OS System Files, some Program Files 20-30GB
- [D Drive] Dedicated Swap partition, 10-20GB
- You must know the maximum size to which your swap file may grow before you set this up; once you partition your System drive, WinXP won't let you resize it (although you could do that with Partition Magic)
- If your maximum Swap File size is 12 GB, then make your D: Drive = 12GB and your C: Drive = 38GB - you get the idea.
- I don't think you want a C: Drive less than 20GB, so at best make it a 20GB/20GB split. In fact this is the configuration I recommend for your case.

Exchange: [E Drive] 80GB
SQL Server: [F Drive] 80GB

The Linux setup Applet always encourages you to set up a swap partition for the OS. This is normal for server-type configurations. I never knew why Windows ignored this prime directive?

Let us know your final choices.

Dave

[RobDog888]

Actually Dave, you need to use a program called Server Magic,
but its from the same company.

Is there a difference in splitting the 40 g system drive for the
swap file or just keep it at 40 and have the swap file in there too?
Since the drive will be partitioned the data will still be going
through the same controller. Doesn't seem like it would be a
benefit?

[Dave Sell]

Originally posted by RobDog888
Actually Dave, you need to use a program called Server Magic,
but its from the same company.

Is there a difference in splitting the 40 g system drive for the
swap file or just keep it at 40 and have the swap file in there too?
Since the drive will be partitioned the data will still be going
through the same controller. Doesn't seem like it would be a
benefit?

Maybe you're right - maybe PM5 does not resize NTFS partition, but it will resize FAT32 partitions quite handily.

If you keep the swap file on the same partition with other files, your swap file will have to "step over" other files when it tries to grow, which it does quite frequently. As it "Steps over" other files, it becomes broken up and scattered around the whole disk. This can substantially slow down access to the entire file, or even parts of the file.

A swap file is at its peak performance level when it is a single, contiguous block of disk, where scanning through it does not require the drive's physical head to "lift off the platter" when traversing the file; this is the longest operation a drive has to make when accessing files. That's why we defragment our system drives on a nightly basis (nudge-nudge) - this process takes broken up files and puts them back on the platter as a single, contiguous block on disk.

This can best be achieved by giving the swap file its own partition with nothing else on it.

[RobDog888]

Ok, so then the solution should be to partition the system dive
into two 20 gig partitions, install SQL on separate D drive and
Exchange on separate E drive.

I think that is the best solution for this scenerio unless anyone
can make anymore suggestions.

[dglienna]

seems good. as long as you allow around 10g for Sql.

[Dave Sell]

Originally posted by dglienna
seems good. as long as you allow around 10g for Sql.

When installing SQL, it may be possible to not install it to the C:\Program Files\ location, but rather to the E:\Program Files\ location, thus sparing you 10GB on the C:\ Drive.

Make Sense? I've done this with rather large installations and not had any problems - but not with SQL Server.

[RobDog888]

Yes, you can change the install path to any drive and path for SQL Server.

I guess its final.

Drive 1: Controller 1
C = OS and 20 gigs.
D = swap file and 20 gigs.

Drive 2: Controller 2
E = Exchange and 80 gigs.

Drive 3: Controller 2
F = SQL and 80 gigs.

Drive 4: Controller 1
G = CDROM

Thanks for all the input guys. I will be installing tonight. I should
have at least the home page setup for my development site by
the end of the week.

Thanks again.

[Dave Sell]

Originally posted by RobDog888
Drive 1: Controller 1
C = OS and 10 gigs.
D = swap file and 10 gigs.

10 + 10 = 40?

[RobDog888]

Doh! Wait, ... 20 + 20 = 40.

[Ideas Man]

If possible, set the pagefile size to static i.e. same minimum and maximum values, this will also help to reduce the fragmentation and increase performance a little.

[Dave Sell]

I would definately agree with this ifit were not on its own partition. But since it is, I do not think this will help performance. Being on its own partition allows growth and shrinkage without any fragmentation.