Input on New System

[John M]

I'd be interested in seeing some HD Tach results on an SAS storage array. I've always been of the opinion that SAS is great for transaction-based activities like database servers or mail servers but it isn't as much of an advantage with large sustained transfers. Twice the spindle speed is never a bad thing though.

HardForum has some results for single drives here. The only one they list that's a 4-drive SAS array (4 Savvio 15k drives in Raid10) is no faster than our SATA array that we shared the benchmark for in previous threads.

 

[choucove]

I spent a little time today looking up some scores and test results of SAS vs. other hard drive options. In most cases I saw the consensus that, while SAS are faster, the overall performance for non-server type transfers and activities are not much greater than a good set of SATA drives. The big difference is having the full 3GB/s interface speed over the 1.5 GB/s interface speed of the Raptors.

However, I also read that Seagate's new 15k.6 Cheetahs are a whole new story with a much higher sustained transfer rate and an added configuration tool which allows you to change the standard settings for how the hard drive is most normally used (short database server type access or longer sustained transfers.)

I was told today also that the Intel Core2Quad processors supported multiple physical processors on the same board, but I'm not too ready to believe this. This would normally be something like a quad-core Xeon perhaps. I know the AMD Athlons do not support multiple physical processors together.

 

[John M]

Only Xeons can be used in multiples.

When saving or opening a large file, you often wait on the CPU as it processes the file. I've watched the HD activity lights when performing various actions within Photoshop and Corel and it's not always a solid, sustained activity. That leads me to wonder if you reach a point where an even faster HD will do no good -- that once you've eliminated the bottleneck, there's no more to be gained.

When I get my hands on some solid state SATA drives, we'll know more about this

 

[choucove]

Solid State Disks sound like wonderful speed deamons to me, but everyone keeps saying one bad thing about them. While they are unbeatable at accessing and reading data speeds (sustained speeds equivalent to or better than SAS drives) their write speed is worse than your standard 7,200 rpm hard drive. Sounds somewhat strange to me, but for the cost benefit, SAS still sounds like it is better performance all around compared to the currently available Solid State disks available out there.

I would love to find some real work comparisons of this all though! Still, for the money SAS may be as big as we can go...solid state disks are still out there in price, and for the cost of one 64GB solid state disk you could make a pretty good sized array of SAS drives.