This is why I dont take practice tests..

CoryS

I hate super obscure questions..

"The computer is equipped with a single hard disk, which hosts the operating system and program files. You have two identical spare hard disks, and you want to install them in the server. You must configure them in such a manner that will provide fault tolerance and the best possible read performance"

simple volume
spanned "
striped "
mirroed "
RAID 5


I picked RAID 5 since it would be redundant and provide great read/write as its striped disks (with the parity algorithm)

The answer they gave was Mirrored.. word for word..

"You should created a mirrored volume because RAID5 cannot be created on two disks; it requires at least three" (duhhhhh)

Ok.. the question says you have a single hard disk and TWO IDENTICAL SPARE HARD DISKS..

Install them, initialize, convert to dynamic, create the RAID5....?!?!?!?!

This is with Transcenders too, which I had more respect for. I could understand if Mirrored solutions provided better read performance but of course they dont.

royal

Well, nothing is perfect. You have to realize, that with Microsoft exams, there are a ton of beta testers that go through the questions validating every tiny little thing. Unfortunately, practice exam vendors do not have this as it would be very costly. In these types of cases, I would send the appropriate company a friendly e-mail letting them know about this error, and that way they can fix it so other people do not encounter these types of issues.

suren327

the transcenders answer is right..because the computer already has one hard disk installed with the operating system files and program files..RAID 5 cannot host the system or boot volumes which means you only have the 2 other disks to create a mirrored volume.

CoryS

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/323434

alrighty from the above KB it explicitly states,
"NOTE: Your operating system and boot files cannot reside on the RAID-5 disks. However, you can put the system swap file on a RAID-5 volume."

However you are able to divide up your RAID5 into seperate volumes and place your OS and boot files on one of these volumes if you so choose. So if you wanted to, could you not just convert this disk to dynamic, initialize the new disks, convert these to dynamic, create your RAID solution and setup a new volume to host whatever it is you want on there....?

I guess at this level I get a little sketchy and I can only hope this is getting to granular to be an actual test question on the 290

sprkymrk

CoryS wrote:

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/323434

alrighty from the above KB it explicitly states,
"NOTE: Your operating system and boot files cannot reside on the RAID-5 disks. However, you can put the system swap file on a RAID-5 volume."

However you are able to divide up your RAID5 into seperate volumes and place your OS and boot files on one of these volumes if you so choose. So if you wanted to, could you not just convert this disk to dynamic, initialize the new disks, convert these to dynamic, create your RAID solution and setup a new volume to host whatever it is you want on there....?

No, the OS cannot reside on a RAID-5 Volume, which is not the same thing as a partition in this sense. Additionally, how would you install your OS in the first place in order to create different partitions/volumes? Or convert to dynamic disks? Realize of course, we are talking about Windows implemented RAID, not hardware RAID. The OS is completely unaware of underlying hardware based RAID so you can easily use a hardware RAID-5 (or 10 or whatever) solution.

CoryS wrote:

I guess at this level I get a little sketchy and I can only hope this is getting to granular to be an actual test question on the 290

Unfortunately this is a good example of a question you might see on the exam. They give you the seemingly obvious answer of RAID-5 since you have 3 identical drives, but the answer lies in the fact that the OS cannot reside on a RAID-5 partition, so your only option is Mirroring. And to be fair, the exam is simply testing your knowledge of two things in one question, so it can't even be called a "trick" question.

CoryS

Fair enough. Thanks for the replies

I will increase my software RAID knowledge lickity split so I can answer accordingly.

Thanks again!

ajs1976

You would use a hardware controller to implement RAID 5 on the three disks, but this is a Microsoft exam, so forget that hardware controllers exist. Microsoft does software RAID and because of those limitations you can not installed the OS to a RAID 5 configuration.

wedge1988

also remember that a "Mirrored" volume does not have to create parity while it writes (So theoretically it has a similar if not same write speed as a RAID-5 volume) also, mirrored volumes do not have to fill in missing parts when being read, (not always case) so it doesnt hamper the CPU for processing, which is why it has a quicker read time. (I do transcender tests and they aren't easy but they prepare you for the real world)