Re: StorEdge 3120 and price
From: Torsten Kirschner (torsten.kirschner_at_sandbox.no)
Date: 04/30/04
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Date: Fri, 30 Apr 2004 07:25:14 +0200
Morten Green Hermansen wrote on Thursday 29 April 2004 22:48 :
> I was searching for some kind of external storage for a SunFire V210.
> Sun have those StoreEdge 3120 1U, 4 disk SCSI cases but for $5500!!! And
> this is only with 2x36GB disks. How can that price ever be justified? I
> mean, we are talking about a metal case with a piece of cable and a
> backplane for hotswapping. Not even hardware RAID (I could be wrong
> here). How can that ever been SO expensive?
>
> The following link is to a 1U DAS box. Which is interfaced equally. The
> price for that one, including 4x40GB (IDE) disks and a build in RAID
> controller is only $1500.
>
> http://www.westekuk.com/products/R1430%20DAS.htm
>
> I know this one is based on IDE drives and that they only spin with
> 7200rpm but it have RAID in hardware so it cannot be that bad a
> performer (compared to the StoreEdge3120 which depend on the host to do
> software RAID).
In my view the 3120 addresses a narrow but nonetheless very real market
segment; customers who need the a low-end JBOD with dual power-supplies and
potentially two SCSI busses, enabling it to either server one server very
well or two servers adequately. For these customers, it is also important
that it is Sun gear, 'cause then it's all under one big support contract by
a single supplier.
It may very well be that You are not such a customer. If You have different
needs, need HW RAID5 and are able to use 3rd party stuff, then just don't
buy the 3120.
As far as IDE disks and SCSI-IDE HW-RAID boxen go, thereis certainly a
large range to choose from. While I am not totally against running IDE
disks in servers, we've had such a SCSI-IDE HW-RAID for years now, there is
actually an argument against IDE. It has something to do with IDE disks'
lack of bad block detection and handling, something that SCSI disks have by
default. I don't recall it exactly, but it convinced me to upgrade to
FC/SCSI HW-RAID boxen for our precious data. We still run the IDE HW-RAID
as a cheap and large scratch disk.
A bit of personal experience: the IDE HW-RAID uses 8 80 GB IDE disks; in
the first array we bought, the disks all came from a single production run,
judging by their serial numbers. One day, two disks failed simultaneously
and problems started to arise with the rest. Of course, all our RAID5 was
gone, and hadn't it been for a paranoid backup policy, this could have
turned out really ugly. Another time, we actually experienced the 'IDE
disks lack something which SCSI disk have by default' situation. This was a
mayor problem again, as it was much more subtle in its symptoms.
In the end, we forced the manufacturer to exchange the entire array with a
new one. We have never had any problems since, and this was years ago.
However, we immediately turned to Sun and asked them how they would solve
our storage issues, and went with their recommendation.
So, on the one hand we have not had any issues with using a SCSI-IDE HW-RAID
box in years. On the other hand, when we did get problems they were so big
that I am not going to recommend such things for 24x7 production
environments ever again. Or at least not until IDE arrays with more reduncy
are available, and then I'd probably go for two of those and miror one on
the other, just in case. 'Buy smart, buy cheap, buy everything twice.'
Speaking of which, I just discovered the 3511FC SATA boxen. Interesting.
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