Seperate volumes for tempdb, data, and backups on SQL Servers in VMs

When configuring new SQL Servers on VMs, it is a good idea to have the Database, TempDB, logs, and backups on separate logical drives, even if the underlying storage is the same? I know that this is a good practice on physical servers; the separation actually helps us to reduce the pains caused by concurrent I/O.

I am trying to understand if having 3 drives instead of 5 would make sense. Can someone please provide their views/suggestions for this idea?

I like to separate them even if they are pointing to the same drives for disk space reasons. If I run out of space on my backup drive/mount point, it's not going to break the database (not right away at least).

This is how I usually separate things at a minimum:

Data files for user databases

Log files for user databases

Data file(s) for tempdb

Log file for tempdb

Data and log files for system databases, except tempdb

Backups (though I prefer to use a network share instead)

Each of the above would be a separate drive or separate mount point. Depending on the system, I might have separate devices for each database's data files.

But my systems have always used a SAN rather than local disks. If you had the choice between 3 drives or 5 drives, I would just ensure backups are separate and tempdb is separate. But again only for disk space reasons.

StackExchange Database Administrators Q#162248, answer score: 7