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Thread: SATA vs SCSI

  1. #1
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    SATA vs SCSI

    Hi, we are looking for a dedicated server to host our video streaming site. We currently stream about 5TB a month.

    How much would SCSI drives make a difference. They are a lot more expensive. As we stream media, is it super improtant that we have SCSI drives.

    We are currently on a Servint VPS with SCSI drives. Will there be a noticable difference going to a dedicated server with SATA drives.

    Cheers

    Cam

  2. #2
    Not really much of a difference since you are currently sharing your I/O with everyone else on the VPS node.
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  3. #3
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    I would agree about the diffrence but for the game servers SCSI is recommended. They are technology for today not to yesterday like SATA is

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  4. #4
    Maybe you are referring to SAS and not SCSI? SCSI technology is a good bit older than SATA

  5. #5
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    The difference is parallel and serial connections. SCSI is the oldest hard drive technology and uses parallel interface, pushing out about 80 MB Bytes per second. ATA (also known as IDE) is also parallel and pumps about 100 MB Bytes per second.

    SAS and SATA are the newer technologies, utilizing serial insterfaces. SAS can pump out a whopping 3 GIG Bytes per second. SATA will push out 150 MB Bytes per second.

    Hope this helps!
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  6. #6
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    For servers the preferred to least preferred in my opinion should be:

    1. SAS
    2. SCSI (the good new stuff not the old stuff)
    3. SATA
    4. IDE
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  7. #7
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    Quote Originally Posted by mrwelcam View Post
    We are currently on a Servint VPS with SCSI drives. Will there be a noticable difference going to a dedicated server with SATA drives.
    I expect disk I/O will probably be faster; but that does depend on the exact configurations and loads.

    You should be able to read large data files from a drive in a dedicated server at about 30-40 million bytes per second, maybe even faster. How fast does the VPS read large data files?
    Last edited by tim2718281; 06-30-2009 at 03:33 AM.

  8. #8
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    What about dealing with databases?

    MYSQL database on a SAS drives will be much more faster?

  9. #9
    Since SCSI is much more expensive compare to SATA so in perfection SCSI is somewhat faster than SATA.
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  10. #10
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    As you are going to stream media, I dont feel it will make much difference.

    How big are you contents?

  11. #11
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    Quote Originally Posted by alahamdan View Post
    What about dealing with databases?

    MYSQL database on a SAS drives will be much more faster?
    Yes MySQL would be much faster on SAS. A SATA disk has around 12 ms access time while the access time of a 15k SAS is ab out 6 ms. So a SAS disk is about 2X faster than s SATA disk.

  12. #12
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    streaming media means= alot of I/O activity on the discs,

    so you should go with SAS HDD drives, and databases also use alot of I/O

    SAS is very costly, hope you have the budget or

    you may go with softlayer.com , they have NAS(Network Attached Storage)

  13. #13
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    NAS

    Quote Originally Posted by singh-admin View Post
    streaming media means= alot of I/O activity on the discs,

    so you should go with SAS HDD drives, and databases also use alot of I/O

    SAS is very costly, hope you have the budget or

    you may go with softlayer.com , they have NAS(Network Attached Storage)
    Can you explain more about NAS please?!

  14. #14
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    Quote Originally Posted by singh-admin View Post
    streaming media means= alot of I/O activity on the discs,
    The OP said they are streaming 5TB a month, which is an average of 2 million bytes a second.

    For normal peak:average ratios, any disk can handle that.

  15. #15
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    NAS has large storage capacity and higher I/O or reads/writes ratios than conventional storage systems like HDD etc.

    many clients use the same NAS facility in a datacenter, so, it costs less than owning SAS drives in your servers

  16. #16
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    Forgive me if it has been stated, but how much content are you hosting?

    If you have enough RAM, it might be worth seeing if your web server is able to cache your data to RAM as much as possible to avoid disk I/O.
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  17. #17
    If you are more concerned with performance, stability and ROI, go with SAS (Serial Addressed SCSI). If on the other hand you don't have the budget and want to save money go with SATA. Much as others have said, SAS far outperforms SATA to the point it isn't even worth comparing. SAS drives are available with higher spindle speeds and tend to last quite a bit longer. Sure, they cost 10x more but if performance matters, they are worth it.
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  18. #18
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    As has already been said, if you can fit most of your content in RAM then it won't matter that much how fast your disks are for videos as the content rarely changes (unlike a database) so you can cache it all.

    Remember it is not just about the disks you use but also the configuration - the RAID setup you use can make a big difference as well.

    There are two main disk IO metrics - raw throughput and IOPS - usually people run out of the second one way before they run out of the first one. In both cases a 15k SAS disk will give you about double the performance of a 7.2k SATA disk.

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  19. #19
    i think even old server like p4 3.0 with 2gb ram and some sata drives can easely handle 5TB a month streaming....

    we got lots of streaming servers with SATA drives. specs are quad core, 16gb ram, 4x1TB SATA drvies RAID1. each server handles ~1.5Gbps streaming (about 350TB/m). content uses about 900MB.

  20. #20
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    Comparing spindle speeds isn't really a valid "SATA vs. SAS" comparison. I mean, there are 10k RPM SATA drives, or compare a SATA Intel x-25e, which will destroy any 15k RPM SAS drive in every single benchmark...

    Of course, the x-25e is obscenely expensive. But my point is that you guys are doing a SATA vs. SAS comparison, and looking at a very small subset of SAS and SATA drives to justify the differences. Which is completely invalid.

  21. #21
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    Quote Originally Posted by Guspaz View Post
    or compare a SATA Intel x-25e, which will destroy any 15k RPM SAS drive in every single benchmark...
    They do? Try an IO test of random writes. ;p
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  22. #22
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    Quote Originally Posted by dazmanultra View Post
    They do? Try an IO test of random writes. ;p
    You're joking, right?

    SQLIO random write test
    Intel x25-e: 94MB/s
    Seagate Cheetah (15k SAS): 5MB/s

    The Intel drive is 19x faster on random write IO speeds... More than an order of magnitude. Random reads and writes are one of the places where a good SSD will absolutely destroy any spindle-based disks.

    Note the qualifier "good". An SLC SSD from virtually any company will produce excellent random write speeds. A *good* MLC SSD (such as Intel's x25-m) will produce much slower speeds, but still enough to wallop any spindle-based disk. The crappier MLC SSDs (primarily those with JMicron controllers, but not exclusively) are dramatically slower than spindle-based disks.

    It seems to me like you're just (way) behind the curve on the state of the SSD market. The slow random write performance that you're probably referencing was an issue with JMicron controllers. Intel, obviously, never used JMicron controllers in their products.

    EDIT: The figures come from this article, which I've seen corroborated by other benchmarks from other sources: http://it.anandtech.com/IT/showdoc.aspx?i=3532&p=1

    The x25-m got a *lot* of random write benchmarks done of late, and from memory, which could be wrong, it did something like 20MB/s on random write IO. But that wasn't even the same benchmark, so it's not really a valid comparison.
    Last edited by Guspaz; 07-02-2009 at 02:07 PM.

  23. #23
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    Quote Originally Posted by dazmanultra View Post
    They do? Try an IO test of random writes. ;p
    Many have benchmarked random writes of X25-E vs. SAS.

    Yes X25-E absolutely crushed SAS, especially in random writes.

    Here's one example:

    http://it.anandtech.com/IT/showdoc.aspx?i=3532&p=7

    As you can see from the benchmark, 1 X25-E is about 2.5 times faster than 8 SAS 15,000rpm disks in RAID 0.

    That means 2 X25-E in RAID 1 would be about 2.5 times faster than a 16 disks SAS 15krpm RAID 10.

    Yeah I'd call that "destroyed".

    Don't mistaken X25-E for those cheapo MLC SSD you see everywhere. X25-E are SLC SSD specifically made for OLTP workload and is extremely fast on random writes.

  24. #24
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    Quote Originally Posted by continuation View Post
    Many have benchmarked random writes of X25-E vs. SAS.

    Yes X25-E absolutely crushed SAS, especially in random writes.

    Here's one example:

    http://it.anandtech.com/IT/showdoc.aspx?i=3532&p=7

    As you can see from the benchmark, 1 X25-E is about 2.5 times faster than 8 SAS 15,000rpm disks in RAID 0.

    That means 2 X25-E in RAID 1 would be about 2.5 times faster than a 16 disks SAS 15krpm RAID 10.

    Yeah I'd call that "destroyed".

    Don't mistaken X25-E for those cheapo MLC SSD you see everywhere. X25-E are SLC SSD specifically made for OLTP workload and is extremely fast on random writes.
    Yeah, and as I said, even the higher-end MLC drives (such as the x25-m, which is far cheaper than the x25-e) will still do a good job in the same scenario. Not nearly as good, but still enough to put any SAS drive out to pasture.

  25. #25
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    Wow, looks like the Intels are certainly on form.

    The crappier MLC SSDs (primarily those with JMicron controllers, but not exclusively) are dramatically slower than spindle-based disks.
    I remember seeing that, I wasn't sure how dramatic the difference was from a good controller to a bad controller like the JMicron.
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