Hi,

Wonder if anyone can help me here.  I got a Dell R710 server.  I have 1 SSD 480 GB HDD and 5x 2TB HDDs.  I got Windows 2012 R2 installed.

I would like to create a tiered storage.  Ideally, I want to use 250 GB of SSD for Windows OS and the rest for caching for the tiered storage.

I would like mirror vs. simple for some failure protection.

My questions:

1)  Is it possible to have tiered mirror storage with only one SSD?  Can I split the remaining 230 GB into 2 partitions and use that as a mirror vs. a second SSD since I don't have any more slot for another SSD drive?  I know mirror requires 2 SSDs minimal.  Just wondering if it is possible just to use the free space on the drive and split it into 2 partitions.

2) I mainly want to use the SSD for caching only.  I rather not have any actual data there.  Actual data can be on the 5x 2 TB drives.  Is there another way to take advantage of SSD speed and still have mirror with 5x 2 TB drives?

I can't seem to get Windows 2012 to let me install this mirror configuration.  Please help!

Thanks!

Where is your Boot OS disk? Is it separate to this or are you installing this on one of those drives?

You are quite limited with what you want to do, since you only have 1 SSD. You cannot mirror a partition of the SSD against another SSD. Both SSD will have to be mirrored completely.

It also depends on how much storage space you want to have, and what kind of RAID volume you can build on your server.

Assuming you get another 480GB SSD.

1. Create a 480GB mirror with the 2 SSD

2. Boot to the server using a mirrored 2TB volume. You can create a 127GB Boot volume, and use the rest as another drive.

3. Create another 2TB mirror for more storage, and use the remaining 2TB as a hot spare.

Put your DB on the 480GB SSD mirror, and use the slower larger volumes for backup, non critical and archive data.