[mythtv-users] The Bigger... Disk contest, Fall 2007 edition
Robert Eden
rmeden at yahoo.com
Mon Oct 22 01:28:13 UTC 2007
On 10/18/2007 1:08 PM, Mailing Lists wrote:
> Given that major companies like IBM and SUN now support SATA in their
> SAN devices, I think its safe to say that reliability has come way up on
> these drives.
As another poster pointed out, Sun says you should only use the SATA
drives for "online storage" not "database" or "Front Line Applications".
(paraphrased, but the 3511 docs had that in 3-4 places).
To that I say bull-crap. It's a disk controller. I ask for a block just
give me a friggen bock don't tell me what I can put on it!!!
I think what we really have is Marketing not wanting the SATA arrays to
cut into FC array profit margins. Marketing wants them available for
folks who ask for them, but try and push folks to the FC hardware.
Personally, at work I'm running multiple Sun 3511 (SATA) arrays... no
problems. Reliability? Give me a break. I'm pretty sure the FC/SATA
controllers are similar if not the same. What are the odds 2 drives
failing before the spare disk is synced up? The SATA version was $10k
cheaper and had 5x the raw capacity. Yes the drives are slower, but
with a 10 (or maybe 12, I forget) wide RAID 5 and small stripe size, the
bottleneck will be the controller, *NOT* the drives. (I try and use
part of the drives for mainline stuff (to avoid track stepping) and the
reset for backups/archives at night).
I have lost a few T3 volumes (FC) array due to controller problems
corrupting the RAID set. I've also lost many FC disks.. they do seem
less reliable. My concern is not disk failure, but controller firmware.
Robert
More information about the mythtv-users
mailing list