[NTLUG:Discuss] Disk performance.

[Greg Hewett]

I would have to second Jim's statement.  You do not want to do this yourself.
I think that management and the preformance tuning for .6T is way to much
work.

My company re-sells Hitachi Storage, and I would say that an 800G array is
around $100K.  This is the High end mid-tier array.  This Array is a screamer.

The advantage is that the raid is done in hardware.  The configuration of the
array is done with a configuration tool which will carve up the luns that will
be presented to the host.  All you do is plug the SCSI connectors into up
to four hosts.

If you would like to come up to our lab in North Dallas, I can show you what
you should expect.  I am an engineer...  NOT A SALESMAN, so do not feel
threatened.  I can show you what the good stuff looks like, and that might
equip you to understand what you need.

If you consider the network storage device, realize that you are as dependable
as your network, and you are as fast as your network. 
100Mbit / 8 = 12.5 Mbytes/second and that does not cut it for your
requirements.

greg

On Thu, Dec 14, 2000 at 04:10:41AM -0600, Jim Wildman wrote:
> Well, here is one solution.  I'm throwing this in here because I already
> have it bookmarked for work..
> 
> http://store.sun.com/webconfig/BuildConfig.jhtml;$sessionid$N23JF0YAAARPLAMTA1ESQCT5AAAACJ1K
> 
> This is highend for Intel based stuff, but midlevel for the
> Solaris/HP-UX market.
> 
> As a summary, 200-800G network storage device starting around $50K.
> 
> For that number of drives, I WOULD NOT recommend building your own.  To
> get the performance out of the drives, you will probably need a
> backplane SCSI bus, not a long ribbon cable, and you will need some
> serious cooling activity.  Performance issues due to noisy cables and
> heat problems are really tough to solve :-).
> 
> With the range of storage needs (50G to 600G), it would be nice to find
> a family of disk arrays which will do, but that may not be possible.
> 
> Dell, Compaq, probably VA-Linux, and any number of hardware vendors can
> provide conceptually similar devices.
> 
> -- 
> ------------------------------------------------------------------------
> Jim Wildman                                    Lead Consultant, marchFIRST
> jim at rossberry.com                               jim.wildman at marchfirst.com
> www.rossberry.com                                       www.marchfirst.com
>                                                              (972)560-7356
> All opinions expressed are mine and not my employer's.
> 
> On Thu, 14 Dec 2000, Steve Baker wrote:
> 
> > Jim Wildman wrote:
> > >
> > > For 100's of gigs, I would definitely look at scsi and maybe even an
> > > external hardware raid cabinet.  This is not going to be cheap...
> >
> > Tell me the bad news.
> >
> 
> _______________________________________________
> http://ntlug.org/mailman/listinfo/discuss

-- 
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                     Greg Hewett <ghewett at d-techcorp.com>   
                   PHONE:  972.588.3565  FAX:  972.588.3551
                              www.D-TechCorp.com
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