Re: Performance of 2780 controller and 141GB drives

John,

Thanks for the detailed reply. You have pointed out all the reasons
and a couple more that I've been using to try to convince myself that
this will work and I won't end up with egg on my face. I was hoping
someone might have some real world experience to share which would hel
relieve my apprehensions. I've been able to persuade TPTB that we
should continue using the i5 as the primary application platform and
as the platform for server consolidation using both IXAs as well as
moving to native apps (Domino, etc.)

Like I said earlier, I'm from the old school of "small drives and lots
of arms" but just like on the development side, I guess us old
dinosaurs need to modernize our thinking.

Thanks again,

Brian


On 8/18/05, Jones, John (US) <John.Jones@xxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> You've got several factors going:
> 
> 1. Mirroring is faster at writes than RAID5.  Reads in general won't be
> faster but probably won't be slower by a measureable difference.
> 2. Service times on 15K drives are noticeably better than on 10K drives.
> 3. Ultra320 SCSI drives vs. what, 80MB?
> 4. PCI-X bus vs. SPD.  This is a huge difference.
> 5. 1GB Read, 3.4GB Write cache on the new controllers.  If your old
> controllers had cache, it was no more than 26MB.
> 6. Faster chassis interconnects for the new box (I'm assuming it'll use
> the 2GB optical).
> 7. Your new box probably has more RAM and certainly has faster
> processors.
> 
> I think you'll easily see a boost in overall performance.
> 
> BTW, I'll be moving our DR box from 62 10K 17GB drives to 42 of the 15K
> 141GB units in the next few months when it moves up from an 8309 to a
> 570.
> 
> --
> John A. Jones, CISSP
> Americas Information Security Officer
> Jones Lang LaSalle, Inc.
> V: +1-630-455-2787  F: +1-312-601-1782
> john.jones@xxxxxxxxxx
> 
> -----Original Message-----
> From: midrange-l-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxx
> [mailto:midrange-l-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of Brian
> Sent: Thursday, August 18, 2005 9:09 AM
> To: Midrange Systems Technical Discussion
> Subject: Performance of 2780 controller and 141GB drives
> 
> Any experience with consolidating DASD on the new 141GB drives out
> there?
> 
> On the new box we are ordering it has been suggested that we move from a
> RAID environment to a mirrored environment. However, to be affordable,
> this would mean consolidating the data storage onto fewer drives. Being
> from the old school of "small drives and lots of arms", I am skeptical
> of the performance of this configuration.
> 
> The current configuration on our 730 consists of two RAID sets, one with
> 20 8GB 10K drives and the other with 16 17GB 10K drives. This gives
> ~400GB on 36 arms. The proposed configuration for the i5 520 is for
> mirroring at the IOP level using the fast 2780 controllers with  a total
> of 16 141GB drives plus 2 35GB drives as mirrored load source in the
> CEC. This gives ~1TB of usable data storage.
> 
> Any opinions? Suggestions?
> 
> Kind regards,
> 
> Brian
> 
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