Entries tagged as ‘Barracuda ES’
Seagate and SAS/SATA flexibility get the nod for their Big Guns of Business platform
When it comes to storage, Tom’s Hardware gets it.
It’s not because they chose Seagate’s Cheetah 15K SAS and Barracuda ES SATA drives for their Big Guns of Business workstation platform. It’s that they understand the truly revolutionary benefits of SAS and SATA in combination.
Serial Attached SCSI (SAS) is taking workstations (and servers, and storage systems) where SCSI never could because of native mix-and-match compatibility with SATA.
That means you can have screamin’ SAS, massive SATA, or both. And change it up tomorrow if you want.
More and more system vendors are getting this. Strongly consider SAS-based systems from here on out.
Categories: Business Solutions · Products
Tagged: SAS, SCSI, Barracuda ES, SATA, Cheetah, 15K, Tom's Hardware
More content, more pixels, more copies, more channels
Gearlog reports that NBC will use a half a million gigabytes of disk storage to cover the Beijing Olympic games.
That’s right: 500 terabytes. A half petabye. For one event.
The new demands of digital video broadcasting
Why so much? Triple the hours of coverage of the 2004 Games, and many more channels (broadcast and web). I’m sure there’s a Digital HD multiplier in the equation as well.
NBC will use Omneon MediaDeck and MediaGrid servers and storage, and Seagate Barracuda ES hard drives to pull this off.
The strangest part: by the 2012 London Olympics, this solution will look quaint and seriously under-sized.
Categories: Business Solutions · Industry trends · Servers · Storage Systems
Tagged: Seagate, Barracuda ES, video production, NBC, Omneon, Olympics, Beijing, MediaGrid, MediaDeck
SAS drives are thriving outside the data center, despite SATA’s cost advantage
Serial Attached SCSI (SAS) was created to replace SCSI, the long-standing enterprise hard drive interface. It has done that, but there have been sightings far from the datacenter. Places like Ravelry, a seemingly home-hosted knitting website:
Rather than shrink in the face of lower priced SATA drives, SAS drives are expanding into SATA’s domain. What’s going on here?
- SATA compatibility. SATA drives interoperate with SAS, so many entry server backplanes and PC motherboards are switching to SAS to cover both interfaces. This has created a virtual “Storage Foreign Exchange Program” as SATA drives are adopted in the enterprise, and SAS drives are tried in homes and small businesses.
- Cost. New 1 TB 7200 RPM SAS drives like the Seagate Barracuda ES.2 cost about $50 more than their SATA equivalents.
- Capacity. The newest SAS enterprise-class drives like Seagate’s 450GB Cheetah 15K.6 offer more capacity than past enterprise drives. This makes them more affordable on a cost-per-GB basis.
- Physical size. The server market has adopted 2.5″ SAS drives en masse, and the storage system market will follow. These drives use a lot less power and space than conventional enterprise drives without sacrificing performance. There are no reasonable SATA 2.5″ alternatives today.
If you’re still stuck in a SCSI/SATA mindset, consider a crash course on SAS.
Who’s replaced SATA or IDE with SAS recently?
Categories: Business Solutions · Digital Home · Industry trends
Tagged: 1 TB, SAS, Barracuda ES, SATA, 2.5", Cheetah 15K, 450 GB, Ravelry
SAS drives get bigger and smaller to take share from SATA for business applications
IDC data from InfoStor shows this year and next are the golden age of SATA drives in the enterprise.
It’s not that the trend for high capacity storage abates in the future; it’s that SAS drives are expanding their capabilities to replace SATA in many applications.
Why settle for an interface originally designed for PCs if you can get the same thing in SAS for a little bit more?
SATA drives won’t go away of course - they still provide the most capacity for the dollar. If it’s good enough for an application, people will continue to use it.
Have you made the jump to SAS? Why or why not?
Categories: Datacenter · Industry trends · Random · Servers · Storage Systems
Tagged: 1 TB, Savvio, SAS, Barracuda ES, SATA, InfoStor, IDC, 2.5"
Higher performance and redundancy for high-capacity SAS architectures
Web 2.0 storage applications have been a boon to high capacity server-class SATA drives like Seagate’s Barracuda ES. But 7200 rpm SATA will only take you so far. Enterprise-class 15K rpm SAS drives are incredibly robust and full-featured, and priced like it. Shouldn’t there be something in between?
Now there is. Seagate has added a SAS drive to the Barracuda ES family. It costs a little more than the SATA version, but gives back dual ports and more than twice the performance in some applications, along with the 1 TB capacity.
Conventional wisdom is that performance is determined by spin speed. Don’t overlook the power of SAS to jack up the speed of your high-capacity applications.
Categories: Products · Random · Storage Systems
Tagged: 1 TB, Barracuda ES, SAS, SATA, Seagate
Common-sense storage innovations slash storage energy use
Xyratex has taken a second step into the lower-power storage arena with the OneStor SP1224s that uses 2.5″ SAS drives. In February they added software to their RAID platform that allows OEMs to selectively spin down drives not in use.
Lisa Hart at Xyratex says “This is like having a light switch on your wall.” Exactly! Everyone understands that leaving lights on in an empty room is a waste. Storage is not so different:
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Use smaller drives. The OneStor SP1224s provides double the performance & half the watts with high performance
2.5″ SAS drives instead of 3.5″ drives. This is the equivalent of having a smaller room that gets plenty bright with a smaller bulb.
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Turn off drives when not in use. MAID technology is going mainstream after pioneering efforts by Copan and others. It’s not for every application, but hits the spot for many of today’s high-growth capacity apps.
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Turn off parts of drives when not in use. Seagate’s PowerTrim technology on
Barracuda ES and
Cheetah 15K 3.5″ drives takes the MAID approach to the drive level by selectively turning off the lights in some “rooms” of the drive’s electronics in a smart way that doesn’t impact performance.
Expect to see more vendors applying smart power management at all leveles to make a big dent in data center Watts per terabyte (or petabyte!).
Comments please: who’s using MAID, PowerTrim or 2.5″ SAS today? Who’s planning to?
Categories: Random
Tagged: Savvio, SAS, Barracuda ES, green, Cheetah, power, Xyatex, SP1224s, MAID
Performance delta between vendors highlights different designs
Richard Poelling at The Tech Lounge recently reviewed three 1 terabyte SATA drives. Seagate’s Barracuda 7200.11 and Barracuda ES.2 drives came out on top compared to Hitachi’s DeskStar 7K1000 drive.
Additional takeaways:
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The Seagate drives were superior by a significant margin in most of the performance tests, including average Read/Write speed, DiskBench and IOmeter.
- The Hitachi drive is 5 platters (200GB/platter); the Seagate drives are 4 platters (250 GB/platter).
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The reviewer pointed out that reliability is hard to measure, and gave the nod to Seagate based on its 5-year warranty vs. Hitachi’s 3-year warranty.
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Richard recommends the server-class Barracuda ES.2 if the additional price (~$50 based on his data) is not an issue.
1 TB SATA disk drives with blazing speed to boot…this industry has come a long way.
Categories: Products
Tagged: 1 TB, Barracuda, Barracuda ES, DeskStar, disk drive, Hitachi, review, Richard Poelling, Seagate, The Tech Lounge
Server SATA drives spice up desktop PCs without adding much cost
Want your desktop PC to stand out in a crowd? You probably wouldn’t think of using storage - at least not without adding a lot of cost.
Think again.
Good Gear Guide reviews the Seagate Barracuda ES, a 7200 RPM SATA drive with a difference. It’s a server drive, but unlike 15K RPM and 10K RPM drives, it’s priced at a small premium to mainstream desktop drives. Plus, it has the high capacity (up to a terabyte) desktops demand these days.
Seagate’s details on the Barracuda ES can be found here.
Seagate designed this drive for high capacity business applications, but as this review shows, it creates an opportunity for system builders and consumers to build a better desktop.
Categories: Desktop · Products
Tagged: Australia, Barracuda ES, Desktop, Good Gear Guide, review
Look beyond spin speed when evaluating SATA drive performance
Here’s a look at the Barracuda ES.2 SATA drive from Australian reviewer PC Authority. Many of today’s capacity intensive server applications require both TBs and IOPs. Depending on the application, both are available in a 7200 rpm SATA drive that can outperform a 10K rpm drive:
Amazingly, it managed to beat Western Digital’s Raptor - the King of Desktop Performance – in every aspect except seek times.
Of course there are serious applications that require more oomph than 7200 rpm SATA can provide. Thinking of performance and capacity in terms of spectrums of requirements rather than black and white needs will result in the most cost-efficient (and profitable) designs.
Categories: Business Solutions · Products · Servers
Tagged: 1 TB, 7200 rpm, Barracuda ES, Raptor, PC Authority, SATA
