"Phil" wrote in message
.. .

"Jez T" wrote in message
...

"Will" wrote

If I was going the external enclosure route, I would probably go with
MSA20
and use SATA. SATA drives have larger capacity, less energy use,
and
less noise. Performance is also great with SATA for small servers
anyway.

Read VERY carefully what HP say in the QuickSpecs about the MSA20. If is
basically suitable for nearline storage, and that's it. (nearline is
where
you backup to disk, then to tape).

SATA performance is ****. You get no error reporting, and it takes YONKS,
and then some, to rebuild a SATA RAID with more than 4-5 disks in.

SATA MTBF is **** as well. These drives are suitable for PCs that get
used
during working hours, and don't get constant access. They are not
suitable
for 24/7 servers with RAID and constant access.



Jez T,
"it takes YONKS"
I guess that is a **** pot load of time, I thought I heard them all, but
that was a new one on me !

I went so far as to look it up: I found it in two on-line English-English
dictionaries but not in their American-English counterparts.
YONKS: noun [u] UK OLD-FASHIONED INFORMAL
a very long time, usually a number of years:
How is Gareth? I haven't seen him for yonks!(from Cambridge Advanced
Learner's Dictionary)
http://dictionary.cambridge.org/

YONKS n. Quite simply, a long time. Not a specific length of time at all;
it
could be minutes or decades. Good examples would be "Where have you been?
I've been waiting here for yonks!" or "Met a friend from school the other
day who I haven't seen for yonks."
http://english2american.com/dictionary/y.html#yonks

I take it Jez you don't think much of SATA I still say if it is a
derivative
of IDE, let the other guys have them. I would like to know more about SAS
drives. Nutcracker, have you priced any of those drives?

I understand it it will require all new hardware and cages. If that's the
case, I'll have to wait till the rich guys start surplusing some or a few
more go bankrupt.


Yes, I have priced and purchased both the 73GB and 146GB drives for projects
at work. I may not be rich, but some of my customers have very deep pockets
and dont skimp on thier gear. Its how I maintain my edge. ; )

I dont have the numbers in front of me, but I seem to recall that they are
comparable to thier U320 equivelants. Many of the new G5's have 3 storage
configuration options ... SCSI, SAS, SATA. I ALWAYS start with a CTO chassis
and spec FIO options so that the machines arrive in 1 box. The interesting
thing is, both SAS/SATA use the same array controllers, since the controller
just provides the serialized channels to conncet to the storage backplanes /
external enclosures. I have only used the onboard (P200) and PCIe (P400)
controllers. I have not had the occasion to use the PCI-X (P600) model, but
it is suitable only for systems which will have externally connected
SAS/SATA MSA's connected (up to 2 per controller). I havent touched any dell
systems that impliment SAS, and frankly, if its as poor as thier
conventional SCSI implimenations, I really dont want to.

My first experience with SAS was at a Sungard DR facility in Philly ... they
gave us like 40 ML570G4's with 700GB of SAS per box. We were all simply
blown away.

For an ISA project at the day job, I spec'd 2 DL380G5's and a DL360G5, all
with SAS. The engineer that is implimenting that setup called me up and
gushed over those boxes. Even though I didnt spec the fastest CPU's that are
available (I chose the low-voltage, lower-heat units), he told me that those
were THE FASTEST machines he had ever worked on.

Suprisingly I find myself in the position of hardware czar and more or less
get to either generate or approve all the hardware configurations for all
the customer projects we are working on. And since I usually get my way
(hhehheh), our new systems are Opteron based (where applicable), and I am
trying to get as much x64 R2 out on the raised floors as possible. Its where
its at !

- LC