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I want to build a two node rack, with one node being high compute intensity and one node used to store the results.

I am not concerned with data integrity.

When I look at the cost for 'nearline' disks (not sure what that means) I am shocked that they cost 3x more than the cost of similarly sized disk on Amazon. For example,

4TB 7.2K RPM Near-Line SAS 6Gbps 3.5in Hot-plug Hard Drive [$666.14]

Can I buy the minimal 2 disks and buy the rest from Amazon, or are these special disks?

Mikhail
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  • Although this was marked as off-topic, it's more notable that this info is easily located by simply searching ServerFault or the Web. http://serverfault.com/questions/188282 | http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nearline_storage – JimNim Apr 21 '14 at 13:45
  • @JimNim It isn't clear if the physical connection is different. – Mikhail Apr 22 '14 at 13:44

1 Answers1

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Nearline SAS are usually enterprise grade SATA disks with a SAS interface. In other words, nearline SAS disks are typically larger, cheaper, lower performance enterprise disks. The interface is standard SAS.

If you want performance and reliability, go for the standard SAS disks.

If you want reliability, but can lose some performance, go for nearline SAS.

If you do not care about performance or reliability you can go with customer grade disks, but my experience is that the cost of a single disk failure typically outweighs the cost of using enterprise disks.

pehrs
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