SAS HARD DRIVE SERIAL
SAS HARD DRIVE PROFESSIONAL

On some systems without a controller, these can be cabled instead to the onboard SATA connections on the motherboard.

SAS HARD DRIVE SERIAL

Serial ATA was designed to replace the older parallel ATA (PATA) standard (often called by the old name IDE), offering several advantages over the older interface: reduced cable size and cost (7 conductors instead of 40), native hot swapping, faster data transfer through higher signaling rates, and more efficient transfer through a I/O queuing protocol. Serial ATA (SATA): SATA drives are base hard drives in Dell PowerEdge servers.Example - plugging a 6Gb/s hard drive into a 3Gb/s backplane will result in the speed being 3Gb/s. In most cases, the higher specification is backwards compatible to the lowest common speed. To get the maximum speed the hard drive, backplane, cables, and controller all have to support the set rate. There is also transfer differences referred to as SATA 1, 2, or 3. In addition, the types cannot be mixed in the same RAID set. There are specific configuration limitations, and the specifics should be checked for the type of controller used. There are four main types used in Dell 9th generation servers and up. They’ve not (yet) seen the risks of cheap storage.This article provides information on understanding hard drive types, RAID and RAID Controllers on Dell PowerEdge and Blade Chassis Servers.ĭell PERC (PowerEdge RAID Controller) and other controllers can support a variety of hard drive types. These are usually inexperienced, amateur or just plain greedy providers – many of whom don’t have experience working with large-scale storage. Unfortunately, there are still many web hosts that advertise large disk quotas instead of delivering performance and reliability.

SAS HARD DRIVE PROFESSIONAL

Most professional hosting providers use SAS storage versus SATA storage for production data – especially for high I/O applications or mission-critical websites that cannot risk downtime, data loss, or data corruption. Do most hosting providers use SAS or SATA? A SAS drive can use at least two times as much signaling voltage than a SATA or ATA drive. With the cost starting at $1/GB for enterprise SAS, it’s easy to see why most hosts only offer SATA as the default choice for their dedicated servers. SAS drives are about 4x more expensive than equivalently SATA. SAS disks come in smaller size formats than SATA.įor data archives, backups, or file storage, SATA is probably better but for production website content, SAS is better. SAS reliability war, SAS storage wins hands down. SATA failures are also unpredictable by comparison. Unlike SATA drives for your home desktop, which have 20-30% duty cycles, SAS is made to read/write data all day, every day. SAS is made for servers, and often have 100% duty cycles. SAS drives can read/write and process data in a fraction of the time as SATA – especially on random reads/writes, and especially with the latest 12 Gbps disks using the latest RAID hardware controllers.Īlthough SATA is good at sequential data, random IOPS are terrible. What are the disadvantages of SATA stage? 1. The perfect use for SATA is storage for files, images, media, or backup snapshots.Ī large RAID-protected SATA-based array will work well, as the writes/reads are mostly sequential. Good storage for infrequently-accessed data It’s capable of 6 Gbps throughput, and can actually write at that rate, if no random reads/writes are involved. SATA is really good at writing sequentially. So hosting providers can offer more storage space at a lower cost – or at a higher profit margin.Īnd dedicated server customers can take advantage of larger storage, such as backup drives. SATA drives are generally 75% less than comparable SAS drives. What are the benefits of SATA storage? 1. All computers sold today come with SATA-II or SATA-III, now often with SSD.

Serial ATA (SATA) is the current evolution of the ATA hard drive from the 1990s and early 2000s, as used in home desktop computers. This is one area where you shouldn’t make choices based solely on price. The abbreviations may look similar, but they’re vastly different technologies.īoth are types of hard drives commonly used in servers, and each has benefits and disadvantages.Ĭhoosing the right drive is critical, especially when you’re hosting important sites or projects.

Sas hard drive