I've acquired a server which I want to configure as a file server.

It's going to get hit fairly hard and will be dishing out big files (over 4gb) to 10-20 concurrent users.

Disk wise, it's got 6 x 34gb U320 drives.

Being controlled by a ServeRAID-5i card capable of:
0, 1, 5, Enhanced-1 (1E), 00, 10, 1E0, 50

While I have the data backed up on my main rig at all times, losing the dataset would be a real PITA. But I really need to maximise the disk space for storage / speed.

What do you think the best raid structure for me would be?

 

Raid 5 Across the 6 Disk will give you 160GB usable space. Perfomance will take a slight hit. It will allow for a dirve to go bang. If one does the disk array will slow down considerably

What OS?

 

2k3 enterprise

 

Raid 5 accross all disks will give 170Gb of space (5x34) it will then need an OS partition (no apps 5-10Gb should be ok) allow for page file etc which would give 160-165Gb file area

 

IMO that should work fine. You will always get a difference of opinion when setting up servers so no right or wrong answer to a lot of it.

If you are able to I would allow about 20GB for OS partition. It is better to have too much than to run out 2 years down the line.

 

I was going to put the OS onto it's own flat disk, with a minimal swap file (which I'll move onto the raid if performance takes a hit) - and a bucket load of RAM (4gb)

 

If the files are going to be that large then I would look into the cluster sizes of the Array, Logical drive and NTFS Cluster sizes so you reduce the performance hit

 

10 will give you the best performance with tolerance. Depends on the total volume of stuff you need to serve.

 

I know it's not answering the question you asked, but I'd also be looking further than the server such as LACP links in to a Gigabit switch - you can have a fast RAID set up, but if the data can't get out of the server quick enough...