SATA can be an alternative for SCSI if you want cheaper, but can accept slower and less reliable storage. We found a home for them in our D2D2T solution, but those specs were acceptable for that project. Everyone's requirements are different for every project. Personally, if I'm responsible for the equipment or my reputation is on the line, then I'm going to recommend what I believe to be the best. If I have to compromise integrity for price, then I make sure that management understands that. I keep an "I told you so" in my back pocket. :) Check this out-- Seek times: SAS Barracuda ES: 8.5/9.5 SAS NL35: 8.0/9.0 SCSI/SAS Cheetah 15k: 3.5/4.0 SCSI/SAS Savvio 10k.2: 3.8/4.4 Sustained transfer rate: SAS Barracuda ES: up to 78 Mbytes/sec SAS NL35: up to 65 Mbytes/sec SCSI/SAS Cheetah 15k: up to 125 Mbytes/sec SCSI/SAS Savvio 10k.2: up to 85 Mbytes/sec Annualized Fail Rate at 24x7 operation: SAS Barracuda ES: .73% Others: not listed, probably worse since the Barracuda is supposed to be their most reliable SATA or probably not rated for 24x7 operation SCSI/SAS Cheetah 15k: .62% SCSI/SAS Savvio 10k.2: .55% So from the numbers, it's safe to say that the SCSI/SAS seek times are almost half of SATA. Additionally, the above SATA drives are up to 25% more likely to fail than a SCSI/SAS drive. That's if you get these new ones that are supposed to be more reliable than the others! Here's an interesting link from the makers of the Barracuda. ;) http://www.seagate.com/products/interface/sata/targetapp.html So the bottom line is that SATA is a viable alternative for SCSI/SAS, but mostly for specific solutions/projects or very small shops. Good luck, Roger Riggins Network Administrator Lutheran Services in Iowa w: 319.859.3543 c: 319.290.5687 http://www.lsiowa.org -----Original Message----- From: thin-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx [mailto:thin-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of Amer Karim Sent: Friday, September 29, 2006 6:39 PM To: thin@xxxxxxxxxxxxx Subject: [THIN] Re: SATA drives The Seagate 3GB/s SATA drives (Barracuda ES) lines have a 5-year warranty - and, for the price, I can put 8 of those in a server with RAID-10 and RAID-5 with 2 hot-spares for a fraction of the cost of SCSI for equivalent capacity. In other words, I'd have to disagree with the comments about SATA not being a viable alternative to SCSI/SAS. And throw in an SAS RAID controller, and you've made the migration to SAS drives down the road a fairly simple thing as well. The SATA disks being referred to in those articles are older tech and better suited for desktop computers, rather than servers - IMHO. Regards, Amer Karim Nautilis Information Systems <b>Lutheran Services in Iowa Confidentiality Notice ==================================================================</b> <red>The information contained in this communication may be confidential, is intended only for the use of the recipient(s) named above, and may be legally privileged. If the reader of this message is not the intended recipient, you are hereby notified that any dissemination, distribution, or copying of this communication, or any of its contents, is strictly prohibited. If you have received this communication in error, please return it to the sender immediately and delete the original message and any copy of it from your computer system. If you have any questions concerning this message, please contact the sender.</red>