Managing Drives

By managing the placement of data on drives, you can improve performance, implement fault tolerance, or do both. In the context of managing drive storage for a SQL Server computer, performance refers in part to the speed of read and write operations, and fault tolerance refers to the ability of the system to continue functioning¾without data loss¾when part of the system fails.

There are a number of methods you can use to manage the placement of data on drives:

• Hardware-based RAID, which can protect against data loss in the event of media failure and also improve performance.
• Windows NT-based disk striping and striping with parity, both of which improve performance. In addition, disk striping with parity protects against data loss in the event of media failure.
• Windows NT-based disk mirroring and duplexing, both of which are fault-tolerance mechanisms that protect against data loss in the event of media failure. They can also improve read performance.
• SQL Server device mirroring, a fault-tolerance mechanism that protects against data loss in the event of media failure.
• SQL Server segments, which can improve SQL Server performance by giving you more control over where you place data on database devices.

This chapter provides an overview of the drive management methods. It also provides instructions for setting up the SQL Server-based drive management methods (SQL Server mirroring and SQL Server segments).

For information choose one of the following topics:

Overview of Drive Management Methods

Using SQL Server Mirroring

Using SQL Server Segments

File Systems