Re: 8G as a 4G replacement

> No way.

  Rats.
 
> This problem will continue to get bigger and bigger, and will particularly
> plague customers in the future when the minimum disk size could potentially
> grow to 17GB, 35GB and then 70GB if we follow the progression of where we
> have been.

  I certainly agree, many of the smaller systems out there already
streached to get 4-4G units just to have RAID. 4-8G units when purchased
new isn't so bad as the prices keep falling, but for the poor guy that
want's to add 4G, he basically has to go used.

  I think the biggest problem we will deal with is as Charly mentioned
earlier: Arm count, or more correctly the LACK of arm count.  Already
you can't cram enough arms in a 170 to feed the CPUs, how bad is it when
we're pouring in 17G (or bigger) drives! 
 
> If you have a need for a 20 GB system, and the minimum DASD size is 70GB,
> what do you do for protection.  In that case, the correct answer may be
> mirroring.  BTW, mirroring will help with the arm contention problem.  But
> what happens if you need with growth to have a system at 140 GB usable, and
> the minimum disk size is 70 GB.  Raid-5 requires a minimum of four devices
> in a parity set!

  It is my opinion that IBM should continue to sell the smaller drives,
even if they are just the larger ones with 'crippling' jumpers or
microcode included (and I have told Mr Jarosh that for the good it'll
do.) Heck, at this point even if they priced them THE SAME as the bigger
drive the customer would save money. IBM has made good strides getting
the entry level systems down in cost but then swat the poor customer
across the face when they want 'just a little more storage'!

  - Larry

-- 
Larry Bolhuis
Arbor Solutions, Inc.
(616) 451-2500
(616) 451-2571 -fax
lbolhuis@arbsol.com
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