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Thread: SCSI v IDE

  1. #1
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    SCSI v IDE

    What's the concensus?

    It seems all the scsi options out there are for miniscule discspace like 9-20 gigs.

    All the IDE's I see offer much more.

    Idealy I want to do my backups nightly drive to drive as I hear raid can have disadvantages from a hack attack. (poet don't know it, i can rhyme anytime)

    Never having had a dedicated of my own, I want to pack the sever with 2-300 sites but I fear 20 gigs might not be enough.

    Let me know what you think of the two options and what you think may be right for my situation.

    Regards,
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  2. #2
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    SCSi drives go all the way up in space.

    IDE vs. SCSI depends on what you want to do. SCSI is more expensive but 8x as fast as a comparable IDE drive (due to the bus width). You don't need SCSI, however, if you're just serving up static pages. If you're running major DB apps though you might want to check it out.

    Also, you'll notice a huge increase in performance if your doing RAID on SCSI. SCSI drives can also read and write to the chain at the same time. IDE drives can't.
    Aaron Wendel
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  3. #3
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  4. #4
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    We're using drives from IDE 100 to 133 and SCSI-3 to LVD 160. SCSI is faster. But today, IDE Drives are getting faster although SCSI has the performance advantage because it has its own CPU, while IDE drives uses the main CPU. Some IDE RAID cards (like 3Ware) has on-board CPU, so it will give the SCSI-like performance on IDE drives.

    SCSI is also a better performance in multitasking. However, I've heard more SCSI drives crashed than IDE drives. And so far, we are very happy with our 3WARE 7800/7500/7210 and Maxtor/IBM/WD Ultra-133 IDE drives. They are fast enough and very cost effective. In some cases, IDE longevity is generaly higher as well.

    With today's faster CPU and memory, you can use IDE drives for many applications, especially if you're looking for cost effective price/performance solutions.
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  5. #5
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    thanks Rey. Yes Cost effiective is key at this point.

    It seems that Perhaps a bigger IDE on a box with a ton of ram may suffice quite well.

    Any other arguements?

    Thanks to all who have replied so far.

    Best
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  6. #6
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    SCSI is faster - IDE is cheaper. With my first server I used the logic that I would go with IDE and get a second server when I needed it. Right now I would rather have more servers than more sites per server (since that number is currently 1 and in the future might be 2 to 3 to fill my needs). Beyond that I might want to get more powerful servers to make administration easier, but to start I would rather have things distributed for safety.
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  7. #7
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    However, I've heard more SCSI drives crashed than IDE drives.
    It seems like that too, but on the other hand many IDE drives are going from 3 year warranties to 1 year. SCSI drives were/are 5 year warranties typically. If they couldn't take it, why would they give such great warranties as well as increased MTBF numbers over IDE drives? (I guess it could just be competition...)

    I also wonder if more SCSI drives are replaced preventatively, being hotswap and many more in hot swap raid arrays. I've heard of many SCSI drives being swapped with no loss of data and only a minute or two of downtime if any because the drive is suspected to have a problem. Whereas IDE's that fail much more often really fail hard causing corruption or worse...
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  8. #8
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    I've been using SCSI drives for the last 5 years, and recently I just upgrade to the Fujitsu's MAM 15K U 160 SCSI 36 Gig hdd, and I can tell you that SCSI owns IDE in anything except for the price.

    and Raid SCSI server is much faster than Any IDE Raid server.

    If you do alot of High I/O Task like video editing(me), heavy DB, you have to get SCSI, it's a day and night differents.

  9. #9
    Do a search on anandtech or Tom's hardware, they had a article a while back comparing these two.


  10. #10
    Well yes, nobody can argue the fact that SCSI is faster than IDE, especially in high bandwidth situations such as video editing, etc etc. But back to the original poster's question, I think he's looking for information on performance in a webserver environment, not personal use.

  11. #11
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    webserver environment, not personal use.
    A web server is a lot heavier on disk IO than most 'personal use'
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  12. #12
    Yes, it is. But some people do more on their personal computer than check email. IE lots of CAD, video/image editing, etc. But some of the arguments in this thread were simply giving your generic SCSI vs. IDE results that are a given, but may not be particularly useful in a hosting environment. There are many factors to also consider other than raw data throughouput, which were touched on a tad here.

    For hosts, it has to do with cost/performance ratio. Because sure, if we all had an unlimited supply of money, it wouldn't even be a question as to what one is better. But for hosts trying to maintain the most stability/performance and continue to pull a profit from their servers it isn't as simple as "buy scsi because it is faster".

    For example, would it be better to save money by going IDE on your servers, but host less clients on them so the disk isn't overworked? Or would you blow your budget on some high-end SCSI that due to its performance you could cram more clients in there and provide them with similar performance of the IDE setup?

    I know it depends on what kind of sites are being hosted, whether or not they require a ton of disk access, have large databases, etc, so IMO I think it would be smart to have a mix of both types of servers so you could strategically place different clients on a particular server according to their plan or maybe more specific disk needs.

    That's why I was hoping to have more real world examples by people using both systems on their servers, as I will be soon be buying a few more servers so it would be good to know a few more pros/cons of each scenario.

  13. #13
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    Originally posted by WII-Aaron
    ... SCSI is more expensive but 8x as fast as a comparable IDE drive (due to the bus width). ...
    How wide is the SCSI bus and how wide is the IDE bus?
    This space for let.
    Inquire within.

  14. #14
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    Thanks Jeremy,

    Those are more along the lines I was looking for.
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  15. #15
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    IDE theoretical max of 133MB/s, SCSI 320MB/s

    Can't off the top of my head remember what Serial ATA will be though.
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  16. #16
    First-generation Serial ATA, which may be available later this year, provides 150 MBps of bandwidth per drive. Second-generation Serial ATA (Serial ATA II) will allow up to 300 MBps of bandwidth and will be backwards-compatible with first-generation Serial ATA.

    I can't remember what the third-generation will be, but its at least 600MBps

  17. #17
    And how much bandwidth does PCI have?

  18. #18
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    33Mhz 32-bit approx. 133MB/s
    66Mhz 32-bit approx. 266MB/s
    33Mhz 64-bit approx. 266MB/s
    66Mhz 64-bit approx. 532MB/s

    And that's before we get on to PCI-X
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