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 Data and Log files .

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admin001
Posting Yak Master

166 Posts

Posted - 2003-04-23 : 22:53:01
Hello ,

Is it recommended to keep the data .mdf files and log .ldf files on different drives ? What are the advantages ?

What if if they are on the same drive . Any comments ?

Tks


AjarnMark
SQL Slashing Gunting Master

3246 Posts

Posted - 2003-04-24 : 02:30:59
Wow, that's a nice wide-open question...

A couple of advantages MIGHT be performance and reliability. In theory, if they are on separate drives then performance is improved because you're spreading out the work. And, in theory, reliability is improved because if your data drive gets fried, your logs are on a different (hopefully not fried) drive and may be higher restoration percentage. Of course, you'd better be doing backups!

But, in all this, the question is, is it worth it? How expensive (dollars, maintenance headaches, etc., etc.) are the drives and how valuable is your data? Will a solid backup plan be sufficient? Will tuning queries and sprocs improve performance more than separate drives?

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admin001
Posting Yak Master

166 Posts

Posted - 2003-04-24 : 07:16:36
Hello AjarnMark,

That was a valuable input. Thank you very much.

admin001

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chadmat
The Chadinator

1974 Posts

Posted - 2003-04-25 : 00:57:40
Yes it is recommended.

It is also recommended to put data and log on RAID 0+1 arrays. If that isn't available then Log should go on Mirrored RAID set, and data a RAID 5 Stripe set.

As mark said, this is more performant. The more spindles you have the better your performance. Also, since T-Log is syncronous writes, is is not recommended to put it on a striped array.

I wouldn't think having them on the same drive would be a good setup for anything more than a small implementation.

-Chad

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