Results 1 to 25 of 26
Thread: SATA vs SCSI
-
06-29-2009, 05:23 AM #1Junior Guru Wannabe
- Join Date
- May 2009
- Posts
- 39
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
-
06-29-2009, 05:24 AM #2Custom Hosting Master
- Join Date
- Jan 2007
- Posts
- 2,602
Not really much of a difference since you are currently sharing your I/O with everyone else on the VPS node.
-
06-29-2009, 05:40 AM #3Web Hosting Master
- Join Date
- Apr 2009
- Posts
- 643
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
CheersASPnix Web Hosting - ASP.NET, MS SQL, AJAX, Hyper-V
Microsoft Hosting and Virtualization
-
06-29-2009, 01:12 PM #4Newbie
- Join Date
- Jun 2009
- Posts
- 10
Maybe you are referring to SAS and not SCSI? SCSI technology is a good bit older than SATA
-
06-29-2009, 01:41 PM #5Web Hosting Master
- Join Date
- May 2005
- Location
- Chicago, IL USA
- Posts
- 1,430
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!||| Mike Bowers - Marketing Director
||| atOmicVPS LTD
||| OnApp Powered Linux & Windows Cloud Hosting ► [Shared] ► [Reseller] ► [VPS]
||| Follow the atOmicVPS Blog
-
06-29-2009, 01:50 PM #6Retired Moderator
- Join Date
- May 2004
- Location
- Toronto, Canada
- Posts
- 5,105
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. IDECloudNexus Technology Services
Managed Services
-
06-30-2009, 03:29 AM #7Web Hosting Master
- Join Date
- Mar 2009
- Posts
- 2,222
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.
-
06-30-2009, 04:25 AM #8Junior Guru Wannabe
- Join Date
- Jun 2008
- Location
- Kuwait
- Posts
- 43
What about dealing with databases?
MYSQL database on a SAS drives will be much more faster?
-
06-30-2009, 05:12 AM #9Support Facility
- Join Date
- Jun 2009
- Posts
- 2,335
Since SCSI is much more expensive compare to SATA so in perfection SCSI is somewhat faster than SATA.
-
06-30-2009, 09:10 AM #10Web Hosting Evangelist
- Join Date
- Jun 2009
- Location
- Seattle, WA
- Posts
- 506
As you are going to stream media, I dont feel it will make much difference.
How big are you contents?
-
06-30-2009, 11:55 AM #11Web Hosting Guru
- Join Date
- Apr 2009
- Posts
- 281
-
06-30-2009, 12:03 PM #12WHT Addict
- Join Date
- Mar 2009
- Location
- India, Kolkata
- Posts
- 107
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)
-
06-30-2009, 12:08 PM #13Junior Guru Wannabe
- Join Date
- Jun 2008
- Location
- Kuwait
- Posts
- 43
-
06-30-2009, 12:14 PM #14Web Hosting Master
- Join Date
- Mar 2009
- Posts
- 2,222
-
06-30-2009, 12:15 PM #15WHT Addict
- Join Date
- Mar 2009
- Location
- India, Kolkata
- Posts
- 107
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
-
06-30-2009, 03:00 PM #16Junior Guru
- Join Date
- Mar 2005
- Posts
- 246
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.ColoCrossing - Connecting Business
█ Alex Vial | avial@colocrossing.com | 1.800.518.9716
█ Enterprise-Class Colo & Dedicated Servers in BUF, CHI, DFW, NYC, SJC, ATL & SEA
-
06-30-2009, 11:27 PM #17Web Hosting Evangelist
- Join Date
- Jun 2007
- Posts
- 501
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.
ZZ Servers - Business Hosting, HIPAA and PCI Compliant Hosting Solutions - http://www.zzservers.com
Xen Virtual Private Servers | Dedicated Servers | Shared Hosting
Custom configurations, firewall, VPN, load balancers, private networks and more.
-
07-01-2009, 07:43 PM #18Web Hosting Guru
- Join Date
- Feb 2006
- Location
- Bristol, UK
- Posts
- 280
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.
Gavin
-
07-02-2009, 11:29 AM #19Newbie
- Join Date
- May 2001
- Posts
- 27
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.
-
07-02-2009, 01:00 PM #20Web Hosting Master
- Join Date
- Sep 2004
- Posts
- 1,007
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.
-
07-02-2009, 01:26 PM #21Web Hosting Master
- Join Date
- Jun 2003
- Location
- London, UK
- Posts
- 1,765
Darren Lingham - Stablepoint Hosting
Stablepoint - Cloud Web Hosting without compromise
We provide industry-leading cPanel™ web hosting in 80+ global cities.
-
07-02-2009, 01:59 PM #22Web Hosting Master
- Join Date
- Sep 2004
- Posts
- 1,007
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.
-
07-02-2009, 02:10 PM #23Web Hosting Guru
- Join Date
- Apr 2009
- Posts
- 281
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.
-
07-02-2009, 02:14 PM #24Web Hosting Master
- Join Date
- Sep 2004
- Posts
- 1,007
-
07-02-2009, 02:20 PM #25Web Hosting Master
- Join Date
- Jun 2003
- Location
- London, UK
- Posts
- 1,765
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.Darren Lingham - Stablepoint Hosting
Stablepoint - Cloud Web Hosting without compromise
We provide industry-leading cPanel™ web hosting in 80+ global cities.
Similar Threads
-
IDE/SATA vs SCSI - why do people trust SATA so much?
By Sage55 in forum Hosting Security and TechnologyReplies: 7Last Post: 03-31-2009, 01:21 PM -
1 SCSI vs 2 SATA
By devonblzx in forum Colocation, Data Centers, IP Space and NetworksReplies: 5Last Post: 12-29-2007, 04:47 AM -
SCSI or SATA
By dotcomUNDERGROUND in forum Dedicated ServerReplies: 23Last Post: 05-16-2007, 11:08 AM -
SCSI vs SATA
By dex101 in forum Dedicated ServerReplies: 7Last Post: 06-14-2006, 06:48 PM -
SATA Vs. SCSI?
By Bashar in forum Dedicated ServerReplies: 15Last Post: 03-25-2005, 10:34 PM