Try using a ZIP drive as your swap volume. That was not a good day... ________________________________ From: thin-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx [mailto:thin-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of Steve Ens Sent: Monday, October 02, 2006 4:15 PM To: thin@xxxxxxxxxxxxx Subject: [THIN] Re: SATA drives I was wondering why my TS is so slow, those 4200RPM IDE drives don't cut it I guess ;-) On 10/2/06, Jeff Pitsch < jepitsch@xxxxxxxxx <mailto:jepitsch@xxxxxxxxx> > wrote: Sorry, I know. I just feel very strongly about this and getting the most of out the hardware you have. I'm going to shut up now. :( On 10/2/06, Greg Reese <gareese@xxxxxxxxx> wrote: don't hold back Jeff. Get it all out. :^) On 10/3/06, Jeff Pitsch <jepitsch@xxxxxxxxx > wrote: I have to completely disagree with this. There is nothing slower in a computer/server than the hard drives. Can other portions be bottlenecks, absolutely, but you aren't typically running out of CPU or even memory on a 32-bit system. why do you think most companies go with 2cpu systems vs 4? Becaues CPU isn't the bottleneck (typically) in a 32-bit system. As well, your arguement falls flat because now we are talking about duo-core dies so those blades, 1U's, etc are now 4way boxes and can be taken advantage of in 64-bit implementations. I'm sorry there is no good arguement for going SATA over SCSI in a TS environment. It's short sighted and your shooting yourself in the foot before you even get off the ground. Jeff Pitsch Microsoft MVP - Terminal Server Provision Networks VIP Forums not enough? Get support from the experts at your business http://jeffpitschconsulting.com <http://jeffpitschconsulting.com/> On 10/2/06, Melvin.Columna@xxxxxxxxx < Melvin.Columna@xxxxxxxxx > wrote: But will it be the smallest bottleneck, might the # of CPUs (specially in Blade systems) not be another potential bottleneck ? I was going chime in last week regarding the warranty, maybe Compaq or some other only give you a 1 year warranty, but most drives these days (even PATA) have 3 or 5 year warranty. And it is true what Amer said, we had a notorious SCSI HD failure rate on our IBM X350, X360 and X365 servers--blame Hitachi. ________________________________ From: thin-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx [mailto: thin-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx <mailto:thin-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> ] On Behalf Of Jeff Pitsch Sent: Sunday, October 01, 2006 8:16 PM To: thin@xxxxxxxxxxxxx Subject: [THIN] Re: SATA drives Performance drop. Price is fine, reliablity maybe, but performance is much worse than SCSI. you are putting in a bottleneck that is unneeded. You aren't supposed to create your own bottleneck in a TS environment. Jeff Pitsch Microsoft MVP - Terminal Server Provision Networks VIP Forums not enough? Get support from the experts at your business http://jeffpitschconsulting.com <http://jeffpitschconsulting.com/> On 9/30/06, Amer Karim <amerk@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx > wrote: I agree with you wrt to SATA being appropriate dependant on what they are going to be used for, and how. However, regarding published failure rates and reliability figures - as far as I'm concerned, they're meaningless. We went through a wonderful period of about 2 years where we were experiencing a failure rate of about 80% (note the missing preceding decimal) on brand new U320 SCSI drives (from various manufacturers) - almost every one of them brand new, and most within 6 to 12 months of use; including one reputation breaking case where every single drive for a new SBS server, 6 drives in RAID-1 and RAID-5 w/ hot-spare, failed the burn in; we RMA'd those, and when we got the replacements, all of those failed again. By then we had swapped out the system board, power supplies, gone through 4 different RAID controllers because the Seagate chaps were convinced the drives were being blown by the surrounding hardware. We decided to switch to IBM drives instead - and had half of them die on us. Turned out the problems were being caused by a bug in the drives' firmware. We're still seeing a failure rate on U320 SCSI drives, both 10K and 15K flavours, which is far greater than it used to be 3 years ago - about 1 in 20 on average, and we've RMA'd more SCSI drives in the last 3 years than we did in the preceding 10. Thus, IMO, figures on failure rates and reliability are moot - one bug in a firmware revision and that much vaunted integrity and reputation is mud as far as a client is concerned. I agree there are some applications where SCSI performance is still a necessity - but I no longer consider them the holy grail, and if a SATA drive goes south I can replace it in however long it takes me to get to the client's site - they're cheap enough, and available enough. Keeping my clients systems up and running is what they pay me for - and redundancy does a far better job of that than hardware 'reliability' and 'failure' figures. I will also state that up until 2 years ago, I would have, and did, walk away from any client who did not want to spend the money on putting SCSI drives in their servers. I'm confident enough in the newer SATA/SAS technologies that I now consider them viable, and in certain cases preferable, alternatives to SCSI. Regards, Amer Karim Nautilis Information Systems -----Original Message----- From: thin-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx [mailto: thin-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx <mailto:thin-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> ] On Behalf Of Roger Riggins Sent: September 29, 2006 10:30 PM To: thin@xxxxxxxxxxxxx Subject: [THIN] Re: SATA drives 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 <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>ÂÂIRnâÂÂÂÂzÂjÅzÂzââÃÃzÂÆÂ