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Thread: Scsi Hdd

  1. #1
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    Scsi Hdd

    I am just wonderin why hardly any hosts offer SCSI HDD's? Is there that much of an increase in performance compared to IDE or SATA?
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  2. #2
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    http://pricewatch.com

    They are expensive.

    You asked about performance? You don't need a Corvette to go down to the corner for a gallon of milk.
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  3. #3
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    Oh, damn that is expensive! So it is a bit of overkill then. I think that I will stick with IDE
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  4. #4
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    SATA is becoming increasingly a popular alternative to SCSI for much less!

  5. #5
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    Lower capacity SCSI drives aren't all that expensive. A 36GB SCSI drive can be picked up for around ~$50.

    If hosts would stop offering 1GB of space with all of their accounts, a 36GB drive would last quite a while.
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  6. #6
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    Yeah, but you're not also taking into consideration the SCSI controller wich will also runn you some bucks. MOBO's with it built in are $$$ server mobo's. Hell even the SCSI ribbon cables are expensive.
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  7. #7
    SCSI, in my opinion, is best for personal/clan game servers. That's where having a 10k RPM drive is nice.
    However, if you have a company (web hosting, game server hosting, etc) get IDE or SATA.
    SCSI is on its way out. SATA 3Gb/s is on its way in, our so it seems...

  8. #8
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    The vast majority of current SATA drives are no better than IDE drives. The fact that they're '150' makes little to no percievable difference. I'm not saying that there's no difference, but your run of the mill SATA drives do *NOT* make a viable alternative to SCSI.

    Please don't underestimate the value of command queueing. A drive that supports command queueing is able to execute reads or writes out of order, in the most physically efficient manner. SCSI has had this for some time now, and it is the main reason why SCSI is so much better than IDE/SATA. The very latest SATA drives can support a version of command queueing, but only if both the drive and the controller both have support for it.

    Command queueing is more important than maximum data transfer rate, spindle speed, or seek time.
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  9. #9
    Anyone ever notice iowait & IDE don't mix?

    SCSI is the only way to go when it's critical date you're storing.

    If you need capacity just RAID 5 a half dozen 73gb 10k's and you've got 350GB of fully redundant storage. You can get Intel 960 based controllers for 150-200 easily, most real servers come with hardware raid on board anyway.
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  10. #10
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    I can think of lots of better uses for a server with SCSI drives then personal/game servers.

    If I want it to Just Work™, SCSI is still the way to go. For the average server in the majority of this market though, pata/sata is probably going to be fine.

  11. #11
    Makes a difference what RAID card you're going to use.

    Perc3/Di is a piece of trash. No write caching, after upgrading firmware to 2.8.XX you lose ALL your performance on writes.

    We actually flashed all our 2650's back to the previous 2.5(4) release just to re-enable write caching & regain normal performance. Of course those 2650's are long gone now, but just something to keep in mind...

    You got a SCSI drive, great, that's 1/2 the battle -- Now you need to get a real controller -- I STRONGLY recommend Intel RAID controllers. They are the best in my book.
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  12. #12
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    Originally posted by PSFServers
    http://pricewatch.com

    They are expensive.

    You asked about performance? You don't need a Corvette to go down to the corner for a gallon of milk.
    So true you need a helicopter

  13. #13
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    With the expecton of the WD Raptor and a few SATA 150 drives with command queing, most SCSI drives easily outperform IDE/SATA drives. Note that many SATA drives are nothing more than bridged IDE applications.

    Take a trip over to storagereview.com to get a comparison of drives in their file and web benchmarks.

    We used to have terrible disk io problems with a database. The DB was on a SATA RAID 5 (Older Seagates w/o NCQ) using a 3Ware Card.

    We moved it onto a SCSI RAID 5 with 4 10K RPM Cheetahs using an Adaptec card.

    No more disk i/o issues. Database locking problems are now gone.


    The difference in price:

    SATA Drives: $360
    SATA Controller: $350
    Total $700

    SCSI Drives: $1150
    RAID Controller: $900
    Total $2050

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  14. #14
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    SCSI drives are built to higher tolerances than IDE drives as well... you will see SCSI drives with longer warantee periods (5 yrs+ vs 1 yr.) and higher MTBF than ordinary IDE drives. This is not to say they don't fail, but they are less prone to failure under heavy abuse than IDE drives which are designed to be acceptable for their target market: maximum bang for minimum buck home desktop systems.
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  15. #15
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    I made a post a little bit ago explaining some of the fundamentals with server HDs: Server HD Performance Overview

    You may find it helpful in understanding the benefits and comparisons of IDE/SATA/SCSI.

    At the time it was being discussed in this thread
    ---
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    MikeSchroll.com

  16. #16
    Here's the overall summary:
    • SCSI drives are generally targeted at the top end of the market, meaning you're going to see highest performance and reliability in SCSI drives first (if ever in IDE). People with critical data/performance needs buy SCSI, and are willing to pay for the benefits. Look at the number fo 15,000 RPM IDE drives out there for an example. Check hard drive warranties for another.
    • Tagged command queueing is a big deal, or can be if you're hitting a database hard. This essentially lets a small computer on the SCSI drive re-order its data requests to optimise performance. It also allows the host controller/processor do other things, rather than micro-managing the disk access like IDE require(d|s).
    • RAID seems to work much better on SCSI than IDE, especially if you're talking about something inteisive like rebuilding a RAID-5 array. It's a case of the controller passing commands to the drives and knowing they'll get done so it can worry with recreating the lost data from parity calculations, versus having to oversee the reads/writes in addition to rebuilding the array.
    Now, SATA V2 is supposed to even the playing field a little, and I'd love it if it would. I'd prefer to get cheaper drives.

    But I'm not counting on it. The best IDE drives for a while have been the "special edition" WD drives with the big cache and the long warranty, but I've had about half of those I've purchased fail. At the same time, I've bought years-old well-worked SCSI drives off eBay with few problems at all.

    If your data's important, go SCSI. I just sent 4 servers off to a datacenter -- not all are running hardware-based RAID (some are software), but all are running on SCSI drives.

  17. #17
    compared with the IDE and SATA, the SCSI is cheap and reliable

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