Is It Safe To Use Volume Mount Points With SQL 2005?

Hello,

To implement the new SQL 2005, I plan to make the environment easy to manage. The environment should be simple to document and be automated via scripts. Therefore I plan to use mount points as described below.

On a typical SQL server with multiple drives like C, D, E, F, G, H. Where each drive will have various folders to hold SQL code, data files, transaction log files, tempdb files, snapshot files, and other types of files. This typical environment is not pretty and is hard to write scripts for.

So I plan to standardize on one standard directory structure via volume mount point. On all new SQL 2005 servers, we should see drive E as the one and only SQL Server directory. Other drives will be mounted to drive E as shown.

E:

SQLSERVER local folder -sql code for each db instance

SQLSHARED local folder -sql shared tools for all db instances

SQLTLOG1 Drive H -db transaction log

SQLSNAP1 Drive F -db snapshot files

SQLTEMPDB1 Drive H -tempdb main data file

SQLWORK Drive D - DBA work area

SQLDATA1 Drive G -db data files

SQLDATA2 Future Drive -if SQLDATA1 is too large for any direct attached drive, or to get more I/O throughput.

With this implementation, I can easily write scripts to manage the environment. Also if any mounted volume is out of space, we can swap the based drive without doing any change to database configuration. We can also switch from direct attached drive to SAN in the future.

Do you think mount point is safe to use with SQL 2005? I know it is supported.

Do you have a standard directory structure for your environment? How do you do it?

Thanks,

KTMD