This white paper focuses on the SQL Server I/O subsystem and the role it plays in a SharePoint environment. The goal of this research is to provide guidance and insight into optimizing the database host and the related benefits to the overall scalability and performance of a SharePoint farm. This paper provides detailed information on the factors to be considered when designing a farm and how to best configure them. Finally, this paper covers several performance metrics for various farm components and provides detailed information on how the recommended farm architecture can achieve sub one second response times. Dell is able to provide this data due to an internally developed load generation tool which was created specifically for SharePoint, and was used to conduct several different experiments that were intended to stress the SQL Server I/O subsystem.