For a Business Class Server, SATAII or SCSI

[MrControversial]

I'm thinking about buying a new server, should I go with SATA II server class drives or SCSI?

 

[InlineFour]

what's the server for? how many people will the server seve?

scsi is always better, but depending on what you use it for, it may be overkill.

 

[Corporate Thug]

SCSI is gonna be faster but will come at a premium

 

[fire400]

I think it depends on what kind of controller you want and the efficiency of data storage you want, and then.. the money you are going to put into this.

SATA is more standard than SCSI. But if you know what you are doing, you will get more pleasing results with SCSI.

 

[MrControversial]

Why is SCSI better? Its cost/GB isn't that good and SATAII is faster. I'm not talking about consumer level SATAII drives, I'm talking about SATAII for servers. They cost more than the others, but they're more reliable. Are there any reasons why you guys believe SCSI is better over server-class SATA? I haven't made my mind up yet, but I just want a well-balanced comparison.

 

[Tennoh]

It all depends on your budget. For scalability in relation to cost, you may want to get SATA drives now using a SAS (Serial Attached SCSI) controller. A SAS controller would be capable of using the SATA drives in conjunction with SAS drives that you may want to expand to in the future. SAS drives are superior to standard U320 SCSI drives in practically every way other than availability.

 

[InlineFour]

Originally posted by: MrControversial
Why is SCSI better? Its cost/GB isn't that good and SATAII is faster. I'm not talking about consumer level SATAII drives, I'm talking about SATAII for servers. They cost more than the others, but they're more reliable. Are there any reasons why you guys believe SCSI is better over server-class SATA? I haven't made my mind up yet, but I just want a well-balanced comparison.

server class SATA? i've never heard of those.

SCSI is better in performance and reliability and was built from the ground up.

 

[MrControversial]

Originally posted by: InlineFour

Originally posted by: MrControversial
Why is SCSI better? Its cost/GB isn't that good and SATAII is faster. I'm not talking about consumer level SATAII drives, I'm talking about SATAII for servers. They cost more than the others, but they're more reliable. Are there any reasons why you guys believe SCSI is better over server-class SATA? I haven't made my mind up yet, but I just want a well-balanced comparison.

server class SATA? i've never heard of those.

SCSI is better in performance and reliability and was built from the ground up.

Server-class as in more reliable than consumer-level drives.

 

[Nocturnal]

Originally posted by: MrControversial

Originally posted by: InlineFour

Originally posted by: MrControversial
Why is SCSI better? Its cost/GB isn't that good and SATAII is faster. I'm not talking about consumer level SATAII drives, I'm talking about SATAII for servers. They cost more than the others, but they're more reliable. Are there any reasons why you guys believe SCSI is better over server-class SATA? I haven't made my mind up yet, but I just want a well-balanced comparison.

server class SATA? i've never heard of those.

SCSI is better in performance and reliability and was built from the ground up.

Server-class as in more reliable than consumer-level drives.

Are you talking about Raptor drives? I have not seen many business-class SATA drives myself. If there, that's something new I learned

 

[Tennoh]

[/quote]

Are you talking about Raptor drives? I have not seen many business-class SATA drives myself. If there, that's something new I learned [/quote]

Not just Raptor drives. Many Enterprise grade SATA drives are used in Nearline backup solutions as SATA drives do not have the performance of SCSI but they have much better densities making them perfect for Enterprise disk backups. SATA drives are very much used within businesses quite successfully.

 

[halfadder]

Forget U320 SCSI, the days of parallel ribbon cable SCSI are over.

SAS (serial attached SCSI) is the future. Or FibreChannel. Both are excellent choices.

But these days, with RAID 5 and RAID 6, you could get by just as well with a big hardware RAID of Raptor drives.

 

[ribbon13]

Originally posted by: InlineFour
what's the server for? how many people will the server seve?

This is very important.

For a file server, Areca RAID6 and a bunch of WD3200KS would be well suited. For a database that needs more IOPs than STR, upgrade the cache RAM on the HBA, and use Raptors. Don't forget a battery backup module, and then set cache to write-back.

 

[FreshPrince]

SCSI for speed

SAS for newer technology, but not faster...it is really geared towards near line storage...meaning data is important, but the speed of delivery is not important. This is basically the replacement for WORM drives.

FC for faster speed.

 

[Tennoh]

Originally posted by: FreshPrince
SCSI for speed

SAS for newer technology, but not faster...it is really geared towards near line storage...meaning data is important, but the speed of delivery is not important. This is basically the replacement for WORM drives.

FC for faster speed.

Huh? SAS drives have every bit the same, if not greater speeds than U320 SCSI drives. They are available in the same 15K rpm speeds as U320. Where SAS beats U320 is the bandwidth, its expandable into the Gb+/sec range. SAS can approach low end FC performance for a fraction of the cost as well.

The only measurable con of SAS over U320 SCSI is available and a very minute price difference due to SAS being new tech.

 

[ribbon13]

Spot on Tennoh. Not to mention SAS supports SATA, so you can use Raptors or the WD3200/4000/5000 on a SAS HBA anyway if you so wish. LSI took way too damn long to actually get thier product out though, so Areca RAID6 SATA is perfectly sufficient for me.

 

[PingSpike]

I think for most smaller envirnoments SATA in a raid config is probably sufficient. Buy a few spares though, since they're a lot cheaper anyway.

 

[GrammatonJP]

Originally posted by: ribbon13
Spot on Tennoh. Not to mention SAS supports SATA, so you can use Raptors or the WD3200/4000/5000 on a SAS HBA anyway if you so wish. LSI took way too damn long to actually get thier product out though, so Areca RAID6 SATA is perfectly sufficient for me.

Same here.. lsi took too long...