Personally I do not have a perfect answer. I think it really comes to the experienced "gut feeling" But I do not think it would make much difference to performance whatever you chose (for that particular load) None of the VM does real massive file operations, so 5400 rpm will be fine. AS to MySQL DB? Again it depends on the load (I use one that does all I need for the job & it sits within vmdk) As to whether they save money? You would have to find somebody study on them (most likely manufacturer) Consider that not too long you will probably want to change them drives again, so use cheaper option in this case) sebus
Hi FreeStyler, I'm probably waaaaay too late with this answer, but it may help someone else. I swapped four 7200rpm drives (total 2.5tb) for two 2tb WD Green drives when I rebuilt my WHS v1 with the PP3 image, the only thing I noticed was a little lag when acessing it first thing in the morning, or after it had been idel for hours. I'm also using a 1.5tb WD Green drive (passthrough) for Vail on Hyper-V and if anything its seems more responcive than the Aurora VHD image thats on a 7200rpm Seagate drive. But that could be down to VHD vs HDD. What I can tell you is the 'killawatt' adaptor I borrowed said the drives should save me £70 a year. My guess is having them switched off for most of the year, has saved me more than £70
would still go with a regular 7200rpm drive. RPM speed remains a critical performance factor for a webserver/email server
If you are going for performance, drop the Hyper-V and get Xen, then you'll get real speed. For HDD's, WD Black is always a good choice, or the WD Green 2TB+ versions (high density).
My Experience with Green Green HDs weighs less than the Blue (Never came across a Black). Stays cool even after hours of working. Spins quite. If its performance u are looking for i think u should go for Blue or Balck. From my experience Blue has got atleast 30% more performance than Green. (I use both of them for backup, huge files, VMWare VDs)