MS SQL Server 2008 Storage Allocation

Requirement:

You need to make sure that the volume will be able to store documents in a compressed form  (Volume F:/).

Solution:

You should execute the format F: /FS:NTFS /V:BLOBContainer/A:4096 /C command.

Explanation:

This command will format the volume, convert it to NTFS and then label it as BLOB Container . This command will also set the NTFS cluster size to 4096. It is important to note that the cluster size must be 4096 or smaller for compression to be enabled for a volume. Finally, the /c parameter will compress the volume. When you are storing the FILESTREAM data, you can store it on a compressed or a non compressed volume. The data in FILESTREAM is actually stored on the file system. There are a number of benefits to storing the data on the file system. For instance, you will be able to compress data with the NTFS compression capabilities. When the data is stored, it is in compressed form and when the data is retrieved, it is decompressed.

Requirement:

To change default size 4096 to Raid Level 5

Solution:

You should consider making use of the format F: /A: 64K /V:Data command.

Explanation:

When you create a RAID 5 volume, you need to format it to ensure that it is usable for storing data. By default, the allocation unit for a logical unit number (LUN) is 4096 bytes (4 KB) on an NTFS partition. When you are storing data with large files on a RAID 5 volume, you should change the allocation unit to 64 KB, which is 65536 bytes. When you run execute the command format F: / A : 64K /V: Data, you will be able to format the RAID 5 disk with a new allocation unit. In this command, you would need to provide the volume letter, which is F: in this case, the /A :size clause defines the allocation unit size, which is 64 KB in this scenario, and /V: is the volume name.