Hardware RAID Level & Performance

[Jared Watkins]

Andrew Morgan wrote:

>
> You may want to look into Dell's AX100 SAN (a rebranded version of the 
> EMC Clariion AX100).  These use SATA drives with a FC front end.  They 
> are relatively inexpensive for the amount of storage you can get, if 
> your I/O needs match.  You can also go a little more upscale with the 
> CX300/500/700 models which support a mix of FC and SATA hard drives 
> and offer greater expandability.
>
> Whether these solutions are appropriate for storing mail is left as an 
> exercise for the reader...   :)
>
I've had the chance to test about a dozen different storage systems... 
FC and ATA...   I have tried to run CX200 and 300s in production with a 
mix of FC and ATA drives.. using the ata for simple file server space.. 
and let me just say.. don't go there.  The emc ata performance was so 
bad.. after 4 months of them tinkering with it we eventually sent it 
back for all FC drives.  Their ata systems couldn't match any of the 
other ata disk arrays I've tested.

One good but lesser known company is http://www.technomagesinc.com/  I 
have about 8TB worth of their ata disk in production... with FC and U160 
connectivity.   The boxes are all off the shelf and proven hardware.. 
nothing exotic and proprietary.. and they run embedded linux.  Very 
straight forward systems that just work.. and very good support.

Jared
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