Right, so there is a lot of speculation out there as to exactly how to setup a Server to achieve the best performance & stability from it. Everyone has their own practices which they like to follow & I thought I would share mine with you too.

Lets Start at the Hardware RAID Level:

I like my Operating Systems to sit on a RAID 1 or RAID 1+0 Array configured (at the Array Controller level with seperate Partitions as follows:)

OS Partition	20-30 GB	RAID 1/1+0
PageFile Partition	110% Physical RAM	RAID 1/1+0
Data/Binary Partition	Remaining Space	RAID 1/1+0

So what does the above setup achieve? Well first of all, once Windows is installed, you will see 3 Seperate "Disks" meaning that you cannot mess with the HDD config.

You have also ensured that the OS sees the disks as seperate meaning your "Best Practice Analyzers & Tools" should come back with less warnings when you run them.

On deploying the Operating System, I will follow the Normal Deploy Procedures & then configure it as follows once installed:

NTFS Partitions: C:\ = System Partition
                            D:\ = Data Partition
                            P:\ = Page File Partition

Page Files: C:\ = Amount of Physical Memory for Dump File (Only if you want to keep a Dump File)
                    P:\ = 110% Amount of Physical Memory

Application Installations: C:\

Application Source Files: D:\
Application Data: D:\

Set ALL Event Logs Size to: 40+ MB

Hardware FirmWare at Latest Release

Hardware Drivers at Latest Release

Operating System Service Packs & Patches at Latest Release

Application Service Packs & Patches at Latest Release

For me, this has always been a successful recipe of building Reliable & Optomized Back-End Infrastructure and I hope its of use to someone else out there.

If you feel you think some changes to this build guide would benefit Myself & Other users more, feel free to share your opinion in the comments. After All, we are here to help one another.