Date: Fri, 11 Aug 2000 09:59:06 -0700 (PDT) From: "Jason C. Wells" <jcwells@nwlink.com> To: Francisco Reyes <fran@reyes.somos.net> 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: <Pine.SOL.3.96.1000811090524.25067A-100000@utah> In-Reply-To: <200008110516.BAA10534@sanson.reyes.somos.net>
next in thread | previous in thread | raw e-mail | index | archive | help
On Fri, 11 Aug 2000, Francisco Reyes wrote: First let me say that I conceded the point in another message. I just want to address a couple of Fransico's points here. > 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. I suppose cost is alway an issue. I was comparing the cost of a one time server purchase to even the cost of two employees which probably induce a fixed expenditure of 80,000 per year. Disc's look awful cheap comparatively. I have fought the cost battle myself and lost. Well, I actually lost double. Because the company loses, and then I have to fix the stuff that was broken too. Eventually, the company spends the money they would have spent anyway plus the cost of having to recoup what was messed up. > >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. No. I was thinking the 4 SCSI [IDE] discs are 4 times the price of one SCSI [IDE] disc, hence the "in either case". We are talking about the same thing. > ANY SCSI raid controller STARTS on the $500+ range and EACH scsi > drive is more expensive than any IDE drive. But a simple adaptec card and vinum is 200 bucks. Greg's site (IIRC) pokes some wholes in the notion that a card is faster than software. IDE can't do RAID without the RAID adapter as I understand it. This was an unstated assumption of mine. > >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). Nope. I was just thinking about the advertised peak bandwidth numbers. 33 verus 40, 66 versus 80 and so forth. For models that were contemporary, SCSI has always been faster. Not very scientific I admit. > >SCSI is much more flexible with the number of discs > >connected, > > There are different solutions to different problems. This > "flexibility" may NEVER be required. To be sure. Different problem require different solutions. > 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. I agree. And if you are doing more than one computer you still probably need a SCSI tape. Not for the sake of SCSI itself, but for the sake of being able to get a good big fast tape drive. Even more so if you are not running a seperate backup network and have to backup hosts with 140GB of storage you provide as an example. > >(RAID is not substitute for backups, IMHO. > > It is not, but it helps to reduce downtime. To be sure. My point was to say that you need a tape drive in either the IDE or SCSI case. (The network backup issue aside) > >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. Wrong. I have. But you know what, cutting money in the areas that provide the support leads to lack of support. Sure, the demand against IT could be scaled down to match the budget constraints. Has anyone ever worked in an organization where IT demands _actually_ went down? IT seems to be the one place where bosses will say, "I am not spending that money." Yet they would never consider disconnecting the phone or opening the main circuit breaker for part of the day. This mindset utterly slays me. But we philosophize/rhetoricize/gripe at this point. > > 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 Yep, this is the point I conceded to that other fellow who laid it out for me. The real kicker is when drive capacities start going up, the price difference becomes more pronounced. Thank you, Jason C. Wells To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-chat" in the body of the message
Want to link to this message? Use this URL: <https://mail-archive.FreeBSD.org/cgi/mid.cgi?Pine.SOL.3.96.1000811090524.25067A-100000>