[rescue] FC-AL drives on sale at geeks.com

[Joshua Boyd]

On Mon, Jan 07, 2008 at 10:53:14AM -0500, Sridhar Ayengar wrote:

> >>> I agree in general, but that SATA drive doesn't work so well in my  
> >>> Blade 1000.

> >> The SATA drive won't be anywhere near as fast, though, no?
> > 
> > The latest SATA drives are pushing 100MB/s.  I would imagine that you
> > would have to be looking at some pretty darn new FC drives to beat that.
> 
> I would think any *pile* of FC drives striped would be faster than a 
> single SATA drive.

I thought we were talking about something like 2 FC drives versus 2 SATA
drives, since we talking about a Blade 1000.

Also, a pile of FC drives striped would be less reliable than a single
SATA drive.  I don't know about you, but I don't call that acceptable. 

That said, real on the market SATA drives can sustain 800 Mb/s.  How
fast has anyone ever managed to push single link 1Gb/s FC?  I would
figure that striped array of 4 scsi drives would result in overhead of
at least 20%.  Is this a valid rule of thumb for FC?

Of course, there are multiple ways to measure speed.  I mainly care
about sustained transfers.  Maybe you care more about seeks.  I'm sure a
FC array would seek better than a single SATA drive.