Should I add RAID?

Right now I have a stock Feb 08 Mac Pro, aside from 2GB of after-market RAM:

-2x 2.8Ghz Penryn XEON
-4x 1GB RAM for a total of 4GB (soon to be doubled)
-1x WD 320GB SATA Hard Drive

Right now, I perform the following tasks on it:

-Java/C++ Programming/DWeaver Web development/minor image editing
-Lots of Video Encoding
-1 or 2 VMware VMs running full time:

• Windows XP32 with Java or MS IDE running
• Red Hat AS with Apache Tomcat and MySQL running

I've already decided to double the RAM for the sake of the VMs.

What I want to know is how much striping and mirroring 4 drives might help me. If it will, which of the above tasks would noticeably benefit?

I don't know much about RAID, aside from the benefit of mirroring drives. The machine is running well now, but if there is better performance to be had, short of upgrading the CPUs, I'll take it. Thanks in advance.

P.S. Would you recommend even more RAM? If so, what would be your minimum.

 

agreed. I was just reading this article as you replied. I've noticed erratic behavior since I started putting heavier workloads on the system. I thought it might be RAM. Even if it wasn't, it wouldn't hurt to upgrade. You and the web page confirmed it.

Pretty sad it only comes with 2GB standard, though. Reminds me of Dell selling Vista boxes with 512MB of RAM (which they have done in the past).

 

Thanks. I'm going to go for 8GB to 12GB to keep everything even.

I was planning on doing RAID 0+1 (or was it RAID 1+0?). A redundant array of striped disks (or was it striped array of redundant disks? ). It's all very confusing. I know there was a thread around here that explained my options in depth, but either way, I've settled on a 4 drive solution for speed and redundancy, which I understand to be the safest and fastest(?) option short of Apple's expensive hardware RAID card (which I don't even think is sold separately).

Thanks