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I plan a new fileserver with 20 concurrent users and 2 TB of online storage. I plan to divide this data volume over 3-4 separate disks. I plan to buy 10k rpm disks. Implementing RAID-1, this would mean that i need 6-8 diks. Should i go for sas disks or would sata disks be sufficient?

user1985245
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  • I do not seek product, service or learning material recommendations. I am only inquiring about whether i should use sas or sata disks to solve my problem. I must say that, for being a newbie, you guys are giving me a very hard time to get my information. Perhaps you should read my question better instead of shutting me down like that – user1985245 Dec 08 '13 at 09:39
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    How is "should I use A or B" not a product recommendation? – Dennis Kaarsemaker Dec 08 '13 at 14:11
  • In my view SAS and SATA are technologies, not products like HP or DEll . How can You discuss technology if It is not allowed namING the technologeis – user1985245 Dec 08 '13 at 14:32
  • I agree to that. This is a discussion over the merits of two technologies, not about specific products. – TomTom Dec 09 '13 at 13:59
  • I hear you, but his question isn't "what are the pros and cons of SAS vs. SATA"; instead, he's asking for something tailored to his server requirements. For my money, that's off-topic; if not as "product recommendation", then as a duplicate of http://serverfault.com/questions/384686/can-you-help-me-with-my-capacity-planning . – MadHatter Dec 10 '13 at 19:26

2 Answers2

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SAS drives are your best approach. Use enterprise SAS disks for speed and nearline SAS disks for capacity.

There's no reason to buy SATA drives these days if you have a choice (unless they're SSDs). Can you elaborate on the server hardware make/model, RAID controller, etc.

ewwhite
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  • I am thinking about a HP Proliant ML 350p Gen8. I do not know about available RAID levels, though.Is it a goodpractice to split the 2 Tb over p.ex. 4 Sas 10k rpm drives in order to make access and transfer times better? – user1985245 Dec 07 '13 at 20:15
  • @user1985245 An HP Gen8 is a safe bet. Be sure that the onboard RAID controller has at least 512MB of cache. SAS disks are available in 300GB, 450GB, 600GB, 900GB and 1.2TB sizes for 2.5" drives. FOUR or SIX drives in a RAID 1+0 is a good configuration on that particular server. – ewwhite Dec 08 '13 at 05:04
  • Thank you for this info. You have been a great help in sorting this out for me. – user1985245 Dec 08 '13 at 09:18
  • Man, "no reason to buy SATA" for a small setup - ever heard of that funny thing called "Money"? Hint - any SAS setup costs a TON more than a SATA setup. I run a SAS backplane setup and I still buy SATA discs because the price of most SAS discs is crazy high. – TomTom Dec 09 '13 at 10:44
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SATA - no need to go SAS. Heck, if you have a decent Raid controller you do not even need 10k RPM discs - 5400 RPM discs are fine, with some SSD as caches.

This smells like you could use one of the SUperMicro storage cases - 24 x 2.5" front loaded SAS slots (+2 back loaded for the IS), a Adaptec 71605Q and 2 smaller SSD as cache - this is what I run now. Slow? Weeeellll..... Raid 6 over 8 discs and I am copying files around with 100+ mb/s - sometimes more than 500. THe SSD cache make a world of difference.

SATA generally is enough for that - remember, this is STILL low usage.

How do you arrive at the need to separate the volumes? Seriously? 2tb is small.

TomTom
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  • I thought of using multiple volumes to increase access times. I do not want the drives to become the bottleneck of the system. Is my reasoning valid? – user1985245 Dec 07 '13 at 16:23
  • I agree that for a 20 user fileserver SATA would be fine. I would use 7200RPM to get the sweet spot between price/performance. Four 1TB drives in RAID 10 would give you 2TB and good performance/redundancy... more platters would give you more IOPs of course. – jlehtinen Dec 07 '13 at 23:07
  • @user1985245 no, it is not - the IO budget is the same, regardless how you slice it. And smaller parts are more likely to overload. – TomTom Dec 08 '13 at 08:51