Entries tagged as ‘SATA’
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: 15K, Barracuda ES, Cheetah, SAS, SATA, SCSI, Tom's Hardware
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, 2.5", 450 GB, Barracuda ES, Cheetah 15K, Ravelry, SAS, SATA
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, 2.5", Barracuda ES, IDC, InfoStor, SAS, SATA, Savvio
Compellent’s success is about more than their technology
My first clue that Compellent is different came in the lobby bathroom. In their LEED-certified corporate HQ (the first in Minnesota), the urinals use no water.
Compellent is getting rave reviews from their fast-growing customer base, not just for their storage solution, but also for their “thin provisioning” approach to delivering and supporting their solutions. I had an eye-opening visit to Compellent and talked with Larry Aszmann, their CTO.
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Categories: Company Profiles · Datacenter · Storage Systems
Tagged: 10K, 15K, Compellent, FC, Larry Aszmann, SATA, Storage Manager
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
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, PC Authority, Raptor, SATA
