RAID 0, not all its cracked out to be? computer lab help please

[MR_T]

So I'm keeping this one short. Got laid off, working on getting my MCSA and finishing up the ICND2 and finishing up school while they still have to pay me.

Bought a cheapo desktop to run some vmware for a home lab. Got server 2008 running as the host OS, server 2003 as the main load eating vmware host with lots of roles/services and a couple of xp vm's running at idle. And I am not very happy with the performance of the virtual machines. I think the disk drives are the weak spots, would I benefit from buying another 500gb or two and running them in raid 0? Ive heard lots of conflicting stories about raid.

here is the setup on the pc

Core 2 Q8200
Intel DQ45CB (built in raid controller)
4 GB DDR2 ram (going to upgrade this to 8)
500gb primary segate hd
1.5tb secondary hd (the vmachies are saved here)

[mho]

I don't really know much about computers, but I can tell you when I put my setup into raid 0 it INCREASED my boot times, and I see no difference in performance at any other time.

[IM708]

Get a fast hd if you want performance. I got one of those WD velociraptor 300g hd for the OS and programs that could benefit from a fast drive. IMO save the RAID configurations for large taxed datacenters.

[ni4ni]

why is this in the lounge- theres a pc forum s/u there 4 ?'s

[DSM4Life]

Sometimes bigger is not alway better. The more space you have (bigger disk) the longer it takes the PC to find files/load.

Raid as far as i know is great for backing up data but doesn't give a real performance bump.
Also note you should have the same drives (size and type) for running raid.

If you are really concerned about disk speed look at the RPM of the drive. 5400 7200 and now 10000 i believe, of course higher RPM less seek time = faster.

[Hoggage_54]

I just bought a new comp with a 1TB 7200 rpm hd and I can run Empire-Total War at full specs with no hiccups

[Panzerfaust]

I wouldn't even worry about RAID on a simple setup like that. Forget the MCSE/MCSA and get out in the real world and gain valuable experience.

MS certs are a ****ing joke.

So I assume this Server 2003 is x64 since you wnna bump the RAM to 8GB? And you are running what VMware platform? Workstation? Player, Server? ESX?

What exactly are you trying to accomplish here?

[mho]

Sometimes bigger is not alway better. The more space you have (bigger disk) the longer it takes the PC to find files/load.

Raid as far as i know is great for backing up data but doesn't give a real performance bump.
Also note you should have the same drives (size and type) for running raid.

If you are really concerned about disk speed look at the RPM of the drive. 5400 7200 and now 10000 i believe, of course higher RPM less seek time = faster.

I think raid 0 is actually less desirable for backing up data. If you lose one drive, all data is lost.

Like DSM says though, if you want faster load times go with smaller drives with high rpm.