SAS: CARDS, ETC. WORTH THE MONEY?

[Stereodude]

Why is SAS so difficult to set up?

It's not.

Do you still have to set jumpers on each drive? Or is 'plug-n-play' like a SATA hard drive?

It's the latter.

 

[Santilli]

It looks to me like you're trying to find a champagne problem for a boxed wine solution. Why do you have to wait until you can go super silly fast when you could go crazy fast now?

You need to get out of this mindset of, I have all of this infrastructure and should use it. You don't need technology security blankets anymore.

Pick the best solution that fits your budget. Throw away all of the slots, cards, and drives that you already have if you can get to a better place without them. They're a sunk cost.

Sechs: I DO listen. You are one of the few people who has made the transition from SCSI/SAS to SSD and posted about it. IIRC, you said:

"I finally got the Vertex that I ordered and installed Windows on it. It's a lot less impressive than I'd been lead to believe.

It's definitely faster than the 10k SAS drive that it displaced. Windows gets to a useable state much faster, and Photoshop CS4 loads pretty quick. But it's not the whiz-bang wow speeds that a lot of people on the Internet have been reporting.

It is a lot cooler and seems to run on less power (which is not that hard to do). Definitely, at this performance level, it would be worth specifying SSDs as an upgrade for some laptop users.

What needs to happen is for prices to come down. I can't imagine putting anything less than a 60GB drive in a user's computer these days, but~$175 is a bit steep. And really, the folks who are willing to shell out, really want/need much larger drives, which may involve the trading of unborn children.

I see prices falling now. When should we expect the next generation of drives to be on the market? "

I can't imagine why one of these companies hasn't come out with a IDE solution, using the full 125 mb/sec for laptops, cheap, SSD. I'm sure someday someone will figure out there is a HUGE market, and fill it.

You compare it to a 10k SAS. I have two, raided 15k's, on a VERY fast raid controller, in RAID 0, so, I figured from your comments that the speed difference wouldn't be THAT much. In comparing my two cheetah raid 0 to the velociaraptor, general feeling is the Cheetah raid is about 2-4 times faster, at least, in similar tasks. My experience with SCSI 10k's is they are about the same, or a bit faster then the VR. Maybe a hair faster, and, I work on a 10k Cheetah boot drive system that is identical to the VR system, in my house, as well.

I also agree with your comments on the pricing for SSD's. I still think I'll wait until prices drop enough to be able to Raid 0 a couple of them, for the reasons you posted above, or,
when one of my drives finally dies.

Working on the other two boxes in the house reminds me that you all helped a tremendous amount, and, that nearly 10 years later, the system has not become obselete at any of the tasks I use it for. In fact, I'm delighted with how fast the SCSI system is.

 

[LunarMist]

SAS is like SATA unless you are working with a bunch-o-drives and controllers.

 

[sechs]

You compare it to a 10k SAS. I have two, raided 15k's, on a VERY fast raid controller, in RAID 0, so, I figured from your comments that the speed difference wouldn't be THAT much.

That's a lot of figuring on your part.

People were saying that SSDs made applications open near instantaneously. They don't do that. That doesn't mean that they aren't better than anything else.

What I have found is that using SSDs largely eliminates storage as the bottleneck on my system. I used to keep Google Earth open all of the time because it took so long to start; now, I open and close it at will, because the limit on starting the application is accessing the Google servers. For several other applications that I use, the limit on start up time is my processor speed. You don't get that with spinning disks.

SSDs are quite pricey compared to 7200RPM SATA drives, which is what they are replacing in most cases. That's not your situation. I'd bet, and I'm sure that there are several here who would join me, that a single SSD would compare favourably with your current array of 15k SCSI drives.

 

[ddrueding]

I think a single OCZ Vertex (not to mention the X-25M) would smoke any number of any spinning disk for desktop use. The significance of access time is THAT huge.

 

[Santilli]

I think a single OCZ Vertex (not to mention the X-25M) would smoke any number of any spinning disk for desktop use. The significance of access time is THAT huge.

David, your preaching to the choir. I've always maintained access time was very important, and, that's why I've always used 15k drives when possible, or practical.

I have no doubt that the SSD's are faster, and make a large difference, it's just not practical right now for what I want, to set it up.

While I know the SSD's would be great, I'm waiting for them to produce enough so the price comes down, and, for Intel to reduce it's cutting edge tax on the drives.

One of these days they might actually produce a SCSI SSD, as well...

 

[ddrueding]

Greg,

The benefits of a SCSI SSD would be exactly zero. None of the advanced features are exclusive to SCSI anymore, and the transfer rates aren't anything to be excited about, either. I'm pretty sure that the future of SSDs is in PCIe direct attached drives.

The other part of what I'm saying is that you don't need to wait for the Intel SSDs to come down, they aren't worth the price, anyway. I have them, but that is because cost isn't really an issue. If your choice is between any spinning platter and a mid-range SSD, you will still be better off.

$240 for 60GB is all you need for SSD nirvana.

 

[Stereodude]

Why do you favor the 60GB Vertex over the 80GB Intel G2?

 

[MaxBurn]

Lets see; price, availability and intel isn't looking so hot on the firmware front at the moment. I am glad I got mine for 240 on that shell shocker deal, don't think I would pick one up for 300 either. That anand article a while back seemed to like some ocz's but you have to pay attention to which of a dozen models to get.

 

[ddrueding]

Price, mainly. The Vertex is 97% of the X25-M for most users. I'm not seeing any difference between my two machines (one with a RAID0 of X25-M, the other with Vertex). Instant is instant, and the Vertex is enough to get you there. Availability is another argument, and that you can buy 30GB drives for $165 for some super-budget SSD lovin'.

I've probably bought a couple dozen of the 30GB drives, and everyone has commented on the performance increase.

 

[Stereodude]

Well, Newegg had the Intel 80GB G2 for $215 the other day. So the OCZ isn't really cheaper & it's only got 75% of the capacity.

I'm not saying the OCZ is a bad drive. I have a 30GB Vertex in my HTPC, but personally, I just don't see any compelling argument to buy them given the current pricing and models.

 

[Stereodude]

Availability is another argument, and that you can buy 30GB drives for $165 for some super-budget SSD lovin'.

That's just pathetic pricing. That drive was $135 before a $20 rebate (which OCZ will try their hardest to cheat you out of) back in March when I bought mine. 8 months later and it's worth more? I don't think so...

 

[Bozo]

What about the performance loss over time with an SSD? Is there a reliable 'defrag' program to clear free space?

 

[ddrueding]

The new firmwares for the OCZ drives do garbage collection without needing OS support.

 

[Santilli]

Greg,

The benefits of a SCSI SSD would be exactly zero. None of the advanced features are exclusive to SCSI anymore, and the transfer rates aren't anything to be excited about, either. I'm pretty sure that the future of SSDs is in PCIe direct attached drives.

The other part of what I'm saying is that you don't need to wait for the Intel SSDs to come down, they aren't worth the price, anyway. I have them, but that is because cost isn't really an issue. If your choice is between any spinning platter and a mid-range SSD, you will still be better off.

$240 for 60GB is all you need for SSD nirvana.

Benefit if SCSI SSD is you have a huge market. IIRC 133/64 bit gives you about 1 gig per second throughput. How many SSD's do you need to get that?

 

[ddrueding]

133/64 is already depreciated. No one is targeting that market, just as no one is targeting OS9 or 8-tracks. The platform is dead.

 

[LunarMist]

133/64 is already depreciated. No one is targeting that market, just as no one is targeting OS9 or 8-tracks. The platform is dead.

:rotfl:

 

[Santilli]

Your right, and so are the PCI-X 8 port raid cards...

 

[LunarMist]

You may be able to obtain some legacy components like that at reduced prices. That could be considered an incentive for budget-

conscious consumers.

 

[LunarMist]

Price, mainly. The Vertex is 97% of the X25-M for most users. I'm not seeing any difference between my two machines (one with a RAID0 of X25-M, the other with Vertex). Instant is instant, and the Vertex is enough to get you there. Availability is another argument, and that you can buy 30GB drives for $165 for some super-budget SSD lovin'.

I've probably bought a couple dozen of the 30GB drives, and everyone has commented on the performance increase.

But are the individual OCZ drives slower than the G2? Striping is not an option. I'm finding the G2 rather slow compared to the year old X25-E due to the slow writes.

 

[ddrueding]

Lunar, what are you doing that is allowing you to even notice the difference? I can find it with a stopwatch, but when I went from a RAID-0 of X25-E to X25-M to Vertex and back I couldn't tell.

 

[mubs]

133/64 is already depreciated. No one is targeting that market, just as no one is targeting OS9 or 8-tracks. The platform is dead.

Deprecated. But considering the age of that technology, it is sure to be depreciated as well.

 

[Santilli]

Reminds me of the mac guy I sold all my SCSI mac stuff to, and, all my mac hardware.

He got it for pennies on the dollar, and was delighted.

I'm sure it was far faster then anything he had ever had, so Sechs' rejects might be someone else's jewels.

 

[LunarMist]

Lunar, what are you doing that is allowing you to even notice the difference? I can find it with a stopwatch, but when I went from a RAID-0 of X25-E to X25-M to Vertex and back I couldn't tell.

Pagefile and tempory files add many seconds to activities. It is quite obvious by the stopwatch, but faster than a Velociraptor. I have no doubt that a RAID 0 helps the MLC writes but that is not an option for me.

 

[sechs]

I'm sure it was far faster then anything he had ever had, so Sechs' rejects might be someone else's jewels.

Probably, but the do-gooder and tax consultant in me did extremely well....

 

[Pradeep]

SAS 2.0 controller review:

http://xbitlabs.com/articles/storage/display/lsi-megaraid-sas9260-8i.html

Using PCI-E 2.0 for maximum bandwidth goodness.

 

[LunarMist]

Does that one work in an older (2008) computer? I'm guessuing that the cables are probably rather expensive addition.

 

[ddrueding]

Looks like you would need 2 break-out cables, that are $50 each at the egg.

 

[Pradeep]

Isn't it 32.99 each? The retail kits may include them.

 

[LunarMist]

Newegg retail is often OEM with a driver CD, not a true retail packaging/kit.

 

[ddrueding]

The Retail Kit includes the cables for $550.

 

[LunarMist]

I was looking at this one which is retail without cables. Obviously the other choice is better if you have no cables. Are LSI controllers generally reliable and have decent drivers?

 

[ddrueding]

They have a fairly indifferent rep, actually. They sell many cards, including major OEMs, and I don't hear much about them. I take that as a good thing.

 

[LunarMist]

It is certainly interesting at least. I'd prefer a removabel RAM module. Is the $172 battery necessary for the cache to work?

 

[ddrueding]

It is certainly interesting at least. I'd prefer a removabel RAM module. Is the $172 battery necessary for the cache to work?

None of the RAID cards I've had prevented you from turning on write cache without the battery, they just highly advised against it. Of course, you can safely allocate all the cache to be read cache safely.

 

[MaxBurn]

If you have decent backup power that's your battery right there.

 

[Stereodude]

If you have decent backup power that's your battery right there.

Not really. It doesn't protect against the machine rebooting or the power supply crapping out while writes are still outstanding.

 

[MaxBurn]

True enough, it is upstream of all that.

 

[Pradeep]

I was looking at this one which is retail without cables. Obviously the other choice is better if you have no cables. Are LSI controllers generally reliable and have decent drivers?

No win 2000 drivers but if you have 2003 or later it's fine. I would suggest a few weeks to get any potential firmware bugs sorted before buying. LSI is widely used in the enterprise sector.

 

[LunarMist]

None of the RAID cards I've had prevented you from turning on write cache without the battery, they just highly advised against it. Of course, you can safely allocate all the cache to be read cache safely.

Good. I don't care about data loss, but I don't want crappy write speeds.