I searched high and low for good performance benchmarks to compare the P420 and P440 with Raid 5 and 10 and how FBWC and SSD caching affect performance but couldn't find much. I'm looking for the best array config for the below scenario:
Server: DL380 G8, Server 2012 R2 running Veeam and VSphere Server. Basically I want this server to be able to handle fast backups and spin up VMs directly from the backup files stored on this server's D drive.
Current disk setup:
P420i (1GBFBWC) with only two mirrored 900GB 10k SAS drives for the c: drive
P420 (1GBFBWC) with 8 900GB 10k SAS drives in RAID 5. I am replacing this controller with a P440 with 4GB FBWC. I also have a 120GB ssd I planned on adding as a cache disk to the P440. I can only have a max of 8 drives for the controller because I don't have a SAS expander.
Considering the workload on this server, how should I configure the D: drive for backup storage and to occasionally use those backups directly to run a couple of VMs with Veeam? I know the P440 with additional 4GB cahce will give a speed improvement, but I'm not sure what route to go. I see 3 main options: 8 drive Raid 10, 6 drive Raid 10 with 120GB SSD cache drive, or 7-Drive Raid 5 with 120GB SSD cache drive. What would you do?
