SCSI vs. SATA (was Re: Upgrading our mail server)

[Skylar Thompson]

Bill Moran wrote:
>
> Has anyone every verified whether or not SATA has the problems that plagued
> ATA?  Such as crappy quality and lying caches?
>
> Personally, I still demand SCSI on production servers because it still
> seems as if:
> a) The performance is still better
> b) The reliability is still better
>
> But I haven't taken a comprehensive look at the SATA offerings.  It also
> seems as if SATA is more limiting.  Most SCSI cards can support 16
> devices, does SATA have similar offerings?  I know it's not common, but
> if you need that many spindles, you need them!
I've used 15-drive SATA Promise arrays with some success. They come in
both Fibre Channel and SCSI varieties, and are about $10k with 400GB
SATA drives. I've run them up to ~170MB/s with RAID-5, which is more
than enough for me. You get the best of both the SATA and SCSI/FC worlds.

-- 
-- Skylar Thompson (skylar at cs.earlham.edu)
-- http://www.cs.earlham.edu/~skylar/


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