SATA on 5.0.6 or 5.0.7?
Steve M. Fabac, Jr.
SATA drives?
I'd like to hear from anyone with SATA based servers and if
they met their exceptions for performance and reliability.
In the past, I have always used SCSI drives for the performance
and customary 5 year warrantee. Now SATA drives are available with
5 year warrantee and manufactures claim the drives are equivalent
to SCSI performance at 40% less cost.
I have checked my distributors and all the SATA drives I can find
are 7200 RPM with the exception of the 36G WD360GD 10k RPM SATA
drive.
I have a request from a client running SCO 3.2v4.2 on 66 MHz 486
with 4G disk to upgrade to current hardware and OS.
SCSI is overkill for this client and the 36G WD looks like a
good choice. I'll eliminate all SCSI by using Backup Edge
writing to a ATAPI DVD-RAM and upgrade the client to
5.0.6 or 5.0.7 (SCO's web site suggests it has upgrades to
Enterprise 6.0 from Xenix/UNIX but there is no part number
listed and inquiries come up: Not Available).
--
Steve Fabac
S.M. Fabac & Associates
816/765-1670
Michael S
using the intel SRCS16 raid controller and the 10K 36 gig raptor drives. So
far other then one of the cables breaking off the connector during shipping,
I have not had any probelms. On the smaller system running around 25 users,
I can not say that I can notice any speed differences between SCSI and SATA.
I am sure on the bigger customers there would be a difference, but for the
price difference SATA works extremely well for us. This is on 5.06 and
5.07, I have not tried it out on 6.0 yet.
"Steve M. Fabac, Jr." <smf...@att.net> wrote in message
news:4325B488...@att.net...
D. Thomas Podnar
: > Anyone running SCO 5.0.6 or 5.0.7 on servers with
: > SATA drives?
: >
: > I'd like to hear from anyone with SATA based servers and if
: > they met their exceptions for performance and reliability.
: >
: > In the past, I have always used SCSI drives for the performance
: > and customary 5 year warrantee. Now SATA drives are available with
: > 5 year warrantee and manufactures claim the drives are equivalent
: > to SCSI performance at 40% less cost.
: >
: > I have checked my distributors and all the SATA drives I can find
: > are 7200 RPM with the exception of the 36G WD360GD 10k RPM SATA
: > drive.
: >
: > I have a request from a client running SCO 3.2v4.2 on 66 MHz 486
: > with 4G disk to upgrade to current hardware and OS.
: >
: > SCSI is overkill for this client and the 36G WD looks like a
: > good choice. I'll eliminate all SCSI by using Backup Edge
: > writing to a ATAPI DVD-RAM and upgrade the client to
: > 5.0.6 or 5.0.7 (SCO's web site suggests it has upgrades to
: > Enterprise 6.0 from Xenix/UNIX but there is no part number
: > listed and inquiries come up: Not Available).
: >
: >
: > --
: >
: > Steve Fabac
: > S.M. Fabac & Associates
: > 816/765-1670
Without the expense of a SATA RAID controller and driver software,
SATA drives under 5.0.6 and 5.0.7 just run in IDE emulation mode.
Here's some good news. (No, I didn't change car insurance.)
There is an Intel-driven specification for the Advanced Host Controller
Interface (AHCI), which is available for relatively recent motherboards.
This specification includes support for SATA 1.5 and SATA II with
very high speeds and native command queuing (NCQ). NCQ improves performance
and is available on many newer SATA hard drives.
SCO OpenServer 6.0.0 has native support for AHCI, with a recently updated
AHCI 1.1 driver now available.
The AHCI driver natively supports these SATA devices at very high
transfer rates...
- Hard drives
- DVD drives
- Iomega REV drives
- Tape drives (requires 1.1 driver)
The OpenServer 6 filesystem is much faster than 5.0.x. A low end AHCI/NCQ
solution will probably significantly outperform a similarly configured
non-RAID SCSI 5.0.x system.
Note: You can't actually purchase a SATA tape drive yet, but we
know they work ;-)
Those attending the BackupEDGE training and certification classes in
New England in two weeks will see an OpenServer 6 system with ALL
of the devices mentioned above.
Tom
---
D. Thomas Podnar
t...@microlite.com http://www.microlite.com
Microlite Corporation 724-375-6711 Voice
2315 Mill Street 724-375-6908 Fax
Aliquippa PA 15001-2228 888-257-3343 Toll Free Sales
-------------------------------------------------------
Developers of Microlite BackupEDGE
Bob Bailin
Have you considered the possibility that the WD Raptor 36GB drive
that you're considering may be overkill for a client migrating from
a 486/66, 4GB system? Plus, these older 36GB drives are much
noisier and run hotter than the more current 7200 RPM drives.
A WD 7200 RPM SATA or PATA drive, 80GB (8MB cache) would
be more than adequate for any application solution they must
now be using, at 1/3 the cost of the 10K RPM drive. (Unless
they're jumping from 5 users to 50.) The 7200 drives only have
a 3-yr warranty, but it appears your client already treats his
13+ yr old system very well.
Bob