John,

Typically the recommended config for a Windows OS install would be a RAID10 setup. Understanding that you want to enable the Hyper-V role as well would use a shared storage config to a SAN array. Since you are using local disk for everything, I would recommend a RAID6 setup. That gives you an extra parity strip. If you reserved one of the disks for a hot spare that leaves you with 5 for the raid config with a little over a terabyte for everything. You can partition the disks with a OS / boot volume and the remainder for the Vm's.

Lance

Well regardless, I truly appreciate you taking the time to help me Peter. As I said, I'm stuck in the wilds of Africa and was reaching for the hammer!!

John

Lance,
Many thanks for that. I understood about the RAID10 preference but I don't have enough disk space for that so I'll go for the RAID6 option that you've suggested.

I've inherited a Hyper-V machine here as well that I believe to be poorly configured. One of the VM instances is down to 6Gb free space now and stuttering. I'm rapidly learning a lot about this - even though I've been in IT for years I've been Management for a long time but this role is pretty much full on hands on, although I must say it makes a nice change to get my hands dirty :-)

Johm,

I'm glad one of our R610s was sparred from the wrath of the hammer , and best of luck with the rest of your setup :)