Developing a Drive Performance Strategy

By managing the placement of data on drives, you can both improve performance and implement fault tolerance. In the context of managing drive storage for a Microsoft® SQL Server™ 2000 installation, performance refers in part to the speed of read and write operations, and fault tolerance refers to the ability of the system to continue functioning without data loss when part of the system fails.

You can use the following methods to manage the placement of data on disk drives:

• Hardware-based RAID (redundant array of independent disks) above level 0 can protect against data loss in the event of media failure, and can improve performance. For more information, see the documentation provided by the vendor.
  
  
• Both Microsoft Windows NT® and Microsoft Windows® 2000-based disk striping, and striping with parity, can improve performance. Disk striping with parity also protects against data loss in the event of media failure.
  
  
• Windows NT and Windows 2000-based disk mirroring and duplexing are both fault-tolerance mechanisms that protect against data loss in the event of media failure. They can also improve read performance.

Important  These fault-tolerance methods do not replace proper backup strategies. You must perform periodic backups to protect your databases and data against catastrophic loss.

For more information about Windows NT and Windows 2000 disk striping, mirroring, and duplexing, see the Windows NT or Windows 2000 documentation.

See Also

Backing Up and Restoring Databases