Predeployment I/O Best Practices (SQL Server Best Practices)

Predeployment I/O Best Practices (Technet, SQL Server Best Practices Article)
Summary: The I/O system is important to the performance of SQL Server. When configuring a new server for SQL Server or when adding or modifying the disk configuration of an existing system, it is good practice to determine the capacity of the I/O subsystem prior to deploying SQL Server. This white paper discusses validating and determining the capacity of an I/O subsystem. A number of tools are available for performing this type of testing. This white paper focuses on the SQLIO.exe tool, but also compares all available tools. It also covers basic I/O configuration best practices for SQL Server 2005.

Resources
SQLIO Disk Subsystem Benchmark Tool (Microsoft Download Center)
How to use the SQLIOSim utility to simulate SQL Server activity on a disk subsystem (Knowledge Base article)
IOMeter (IOMeter site)
SQL ISV blog (Microsoft SQL ISV Program Management Team)
SQL Server CAT Blog (Microsoft SQL Server Development Customer Advisory Team)
SQL Server Best Practices (TechNet site)
SQL Server AlwaysOn Partner Program (Microsoft SQL Server site)
SQL Server Urban Legends (Product Services and Support (PSS) Engineers blog)

SQL Server 2000 I/O Basics white papers
SQL Server 2000 I/O Basics
SQL Server I/O Basics, Chapter 2

Disk Subsystem Performance Analysis for Windows (Windows Hardware Developer Center)
Storport in Windows Server 2003: Improving Manageability and Performance in Hardware RAID and Storage Area Networks (Windows Storage Server white paper)