Date: Fri, 11 Aug 2000 01:25:43 -0400 From: "Francisco Reyes" <fran@reyes.somos.net> To: "Jason C. Wells" <jcwells@nwlink.com> Cc: "chat@FreeBSD.ORG" <chat@FreeBSD.ORG>, "Mike Tancsa" <mike@sentex.net>, "Nicole Harrington." <nicole@unixgirl.com> Subject: Re: 3ware IDE Raid. SCSI killer? Message-ID: <200008110516.BAA10534@sanson.reyes.somos.net> In-Reply-To: <Pine.SOL.3.96.1000810105259.13496A-100000@utah>
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On Thu, 10 Aug 2000 11:14:39 -0700 (PDT), Jason C. Wells wrote: >If you are going to be spending money for multiple discs to create an >array, you have decided that cost is reduced in importance compared to >either performance or reliability or both. Not true. To most companies with real world budgets (i.e. not startups with too much money and not a good CFO to handle them) cost is ALWAYS an issue. The closer you are to the person involved with creating the budget and managing it the more you can see it. There are lots of decisions that take place that one who doesn't deal with the budget people are not aware. >If you need to purchase a >special card anyway (I haven't looked at the price of this IDE setup), 3Ware 2 port $100 3Ware 4 port $220 3Ware 8 port $340 >You double or quadruple your disc cost in either case. You must be thinking of the case where one would replace ONE SCSI drive for multiple IDE drives. That is not the case I am presenting. I am presenting a case where one wants RAID either way. IDE is way cheaper than SCSI. ANY SCSI raid controller STARTS on the $500+ range and EACH scsi drive is more expensive than any IDE drive. >marginally cheaper interface card but take a performance hit with IDE >compared to SCSI. Have you tried them? Have you read their white papers? I will be trying one next week and then I should know (I am placing the order tomorrow). >SCSI is much more flexible with the number of discs >connected, There are different solutions to different problems. This "flexibility" may NEVER be required. Example I have a mail server running with 2Gig TOTAL HD space. Any single 10Gig drive will be more than enough. RAID 1 will give me more reliability, but in terms of needing more than 2 drives... in this case it will never happen. I will never need 7 or 14 drives on that small setup. Howver just having one drive on a non RAID system can disrupt operation for anywhere from 30 minutes to hours. For >not to mention the ability to add a tape that can handle your >needs in throughput and capacity. Anyone with many computers/servers will be able to tell you that trying to do backup from each individual computer is a nightmare so tape on each machine is useless. >(RAID is not substitute for backups, IMHO. It is not, but it helps to reduce downtime. Where I work we are open from 8am to 1am 5 days a week and a few hours less saturday and sunday. We don't have the budget to have someone who will know how to do a restore during all the hours of operation. RAID could keep the system running overnight until the next day in case of a drive failure. A good backup will not. >The cost of even a moderately pricey server ($4,000) is small change for >any business with at least two employees who are not the propreitor's >brothers-in-law. I take it you have never been on a company that was thinking of layofs or had their budget cut significantly. At work my boss had his budget cut almost 1/3. > One could get SCSI with RAID in a box for under $2,500 by >my guesstimation that could handle any small LAN and its users. One could get IDE raid for under $1000. >I don't see much benefit in this. Maybe you save a couple hundred bucks or >ten percent on your server with some detracting issues? On a big system you could save 3 to 4 times. Let's see some prices on a RAID 10 system with 4 drives Case I SCSI 1 controller $400+ 4 9GB drives $876 (IBM 7200RPM Ultra SCSI) Total size available 18GB at a cost of $1200+ Case II IDE 1 controller $220 4 15GB (ATA100 IBM drives 7200RPM) $476 Total size 30GB at a cost of less than $700 A savings of almost 40% and 50% more storage. As the systems grow we still have a big difference in terms of prices for drives 76GB IBM ATA 100 $549 73GB Seagate ultra160 SCA2 $1300 Sure the SCSI on the high end will smoke the IDEs, but that is not what people looking for big IDE drives are in search off. We are probably looking for an archive/temp storage/ staging area where speed is not crucial, but we needs lots and logs of storage. Let it be know that I tried the cheapest SCSIs I could find for the comparisons that were close to the IDE specs. If one goes with more expensive brands/models then the price differentiation is even worse. francisco Moderator of the Corporate BSD list http://www.egroups.com/group/BSD_Corporate To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-chat" in the body of the message
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