STiCory

Alright, some updates, @leadeater and @scottyseng tagging you guys because you've been following along and have both been helpful!
To recap, disk group 0 is a two drive RAID 1 array with two VDs, one is 100GB and the other is 126GB, the second disk group is a four drive RAID 5 array and is 837GB.
I installed the first OS on the 100GB VD (drive letter C), formatted the 126GB (drive letter E) VD as NTFS, formatted the 837GB VD (drive letter F) as NTFS, added the Hyper V role and rebooted. I then created the first VM as a gen 2 with 4GB of RAM and assigned it 4 virtual cores, the location of it's VHD and VM is on the E drive in a folder all of it's own. This is where it starts to get interesting!
I did not at this time have the DC role added, right now there are only two machines, the Hyper-V server and the VM fresh install, I did some CrystalDiskMark testing from the Hyper-V server and this is what I got:

I then did a test of the new server before the DC role and this is what I got:

As expected these are almost identical to the preliminary testing from earlier. I then installed the DC role on the VM, configured ADDS, rebooted a handful of times and did the tests again, this is the Hyper-V server after the DC role was installed on the VM:

And this is the VM after the DC role was installed:

...no change.. at all... I was expecting a hit because Windows Server 2012 R2 disables write cache when the DC role is installed, right? Well come to find out, if the DC is virtualized, it apparently can't disable this through the host.. If you try to disable it manually you get a nice little error that says "your disk may not support this" or something like that, and to top it off if you go to Event Viewer you see a yellow warning that says write cache-ing is enabled and AD corruption may occur.
Interesting.
SO, here is what we did, bought a fresh new battery for the RAID card, made sure the UPS can support the server for at least 20 minutes under load and will be making sure that if there is power fault for more than a minute or so to gracefully shutdown the server. And in the event that the UPS can't support the server for long enough the battery on the RAID card will save the cache until it comes back online.
 
Interesting findings. This is all new to me but I feel like I'm learning this really fast and aren't things that I could really find anywhere online, so in case anyone doesn't know, I wanted to share my results!
 
Thanks for listening, I know my posts are really long and drawn out but I like to be detailed.
 
Thanks for listening!
 
Happy New Years All!

Will do, I'll install the programs on the current RAID 10 VD and see how it fairs and then redo it on a RAID 6 VD and check, then just pick the best, it will most likely be the RAID 6 I'm thinking though just due to the higher sequential speeds.
Agreed, I'm beginning to think. It is a lot of stuff but we're a small shop and I'm trying to bring it into the 21st century haha. It's my fathers company and right now we have everything running on a single 5400RPM HD Windows 10 home desktop..  ..want to talk about atrocious performance? haha
Well that's at least one positive so far this RAID 10 VD has going for it 
Never used that program, I'll check it out, I'm not a sysadmin by trade by any means, just a 26yo having fun while learning as well as trying to upgrade what we have to something better in just about, if not all, category lol.
Interesting note about the DC role and encryption, that was something that I wasn't aware of. Perhaps then use this server like you're mentioning and run two VMs instead of it all on the physical chassis. At that point though, should I keep the single VD or split the VD up into two RAID 5 arrays, one for the hypervisor and the DC server and the other for the file sharing/ application server? Or something else?

Alright, so I've been doing some testing and some thinking, I slightly revised my idea, how does this sound/ is this possible?:
VD0 RAID 1 Array (2) 300GB Drives Raid 1
VD1 RAID 6 Array (4) 300GB Drives Raid 5
 
Physical Machine on VD0
  Windows Server 2012 R2 Standard
    Hyper-V
Virtual Machine 0 on VD0
  Windows Server 2012 R2 Standard (VM1)
    Domain Controller
    Active Directory and all it's happy horse stuff
Virtual Machine 1 on VD1
  Windows Server 2012 R2 Standard (VM2)
    File Server
    Application/ Program Server
 
This way, only things running on the RAID 1 array would be the Hyper-V role, the DC and the AD stuff. This leaves a whole separate OS install on entirely separate drives on an entirely separate RAID array to have all of the files/ applications. My only question here is, when Windows disables write back cache, is it just at the OS install level or does it somehow disable it at the RAID card level? In other words, if the RAID card has write-back cache enabled but one Virtual Machine OS install disables it, do the rest of the VM's hitting that same RAID card have it disabled as well? This is what I have created for VDs on the RAID card, what do you think?


For fun, attached are some CrystalDiskMark tests. First is the small 2 drive RAID 1 array, second is a separate 4 drive RAID 5 array, third replaces that RAID 5 array with a fresh RAID 6, and lastly replacing that RAID 6 is a RAID 10 array. Pretty interesting results honestly seeing how parity arrays are so much different than simple stripes/ mirrors as well as the sequential results on RAID 5 vs. RAID 6!!




 
Thanks everyone!!

LOL, I like researching and learning! Plus facts like this interest me!

I bought few of those LPT printer server and I have limited success with it though, some apps just doesn't play nice with it, especially quite legacy one that needs good connection to the printer, since I believe those kind of apps the data is not pooled, it is sent to the printer line by line as the program process the output. My printer is quite new EPSON dot matrix printer, although nowadays I just use USB and don't use the legacy apps more.
 
If your print server uses 3.3V you can just buy those cheap DC Buck power down from ebay for few dollars, usually used on Arduino or Raspberry Pi project. Most of them will supply up to 1A to 2A of 3.3V from 12V or 5V.