[THIN] Re: SATA drives
- From: Melvin.Columna@xxxxxxxxx
- To: thin@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Mon, 2 Oct 2006 17:23:05 -0400
LOL, sometimes you have to rowl folks up in order to have them give you
truly deep insight. What if I said "Raid 1 would take care of the low
reliability of SATA" ? Would you hold it against me?
Can I raid my Seagate ST-225 drives??
_____
From: thin-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx [mailto:thin-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf
Of Greg Reese
Sent: Monday, October 02, 2006 5:00 PM
To: thin@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: [THIN] Re: SATA drives
don't hold back Jeff. Get it all out. :^)
On 10/3/06, Jeff Pitsch <jepitsch@xxxxxxxxx <mailto: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 <mailto:Melvin.Columna@xxxxxxxxx> <
Melvin.Columna@xxxxxxxxx <mailto: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:
<mailto:thin-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> thin-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of
Jeff Pitsch
Sent: Sunday, October 01, 2006 8:16 PM
To: thin@xxxxxxxxxxxxx <mailto: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
<mailto: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:
<mailto:thin-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> thin-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of
Roger Riggins
Sent: September 29, 2006 10:30 PM
To: thin@xxxxxxxxxxxxx <mailto: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
<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> [mailto:
thin-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx <mailto:thin-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> ] On
Behalf Of Amer Karim
Sent: Friday, September 29, 2006 6:39 PM
To: thin@xxxxxxxxxxxxx <mailto: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
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