Re: Sata vs SCSI raid array

I just have to add this extra comment in as something to consider: How
about iSCSI? We are just starting to get into this world our selves,
and the arguments are compelling. With iSCSI, you can spend hardly any
extra money and setup a nice flexible SAN. You can build an iSCSI
target system on commodity PC based hardware, and use the linux EIT
(Enterprise iSCSI Target) open source software. You can spend about
$650 more and get Open-E, which saves having to build the OS for your
target and manage it (http://www.open-e.com). This has nice features,
such as network load balancing and redundancy, as well as file system
snap shots and an easy web management interface. As far as OS support
goes, most now include iSCSI initiators, though some are clunky (for
example, is just starting out here and is still a bit lacking). You
also really need a Gig NIC to get any throughput, but that's cheep.

Consider:
http://www.siliconmechanics.com/i2901/serial-ata-storage-server.php
About $15K for 10 TB (RAID 5 with hot spares), with 3ware 9550
controllers, 24x 500GB drives, 3 year warranty. You can build smaller
boxes for much less. Optionally add Open-E, and that's it. You can
dole out your storage across any number of systems as necessary from
your SAN. And you've decoupled your storage from your servers, so
maintenance and upgrades become much cleaner. Though I wouldn't
recommend it, you can even mount your SAN over a distance via the
Internet. handy for one off copies or backups in a pinch.

Jon

rusty@grunt.berkeley.edu wrote:

>We used the NexSan AtaBoy with good success. It's ATA internally but
>connects to your machine with SCSI. The box does the raid internally
>in hardware. It has an ethernet connection with a built in web server
>so that you can connect to it with a web browser to configure and
>manage it. I think it has a 2 or 3 year warranty on the drives. We
>had one go bad and they swapped it no problem. They also have an
>SataBoy.
>
>The downside is that you have to get the individual drives from them
>since they remount the individual bare drives in their own proprietary
>housing, I think so that they can be hot swappable. But it's much
>cheaper than getting a SCSI drives RAID box with the RAID done in the
>box.
>
>Having drives that are hot swappable is extremely nice; with the lower
>price of these kinds of setups you can easily afford to have a hot
>spare plugged in which it will automatically switch over to when one
>of the drives fails. And with the network connection it sends me
>email when that happens. Then you just pull out the failed drive and
>replace it, all without having to power anything down or reboot
>anything.
>
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-- 
-     _____/     _____/      /           - Jonathan Loran -           -
-    /          /           /                IT Manager               -
-  _____  /   _____  /     /         Space Physics Research Group     -
-        /          /     /      Space Sciences Laboratory, UC Berkeley
- ______/    ______/    ______/  (510) 643-5146 jloran@ssl.berkeley.edu
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