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File server: SCSI or SATA?

rivan

rivan

Diamond Member
Where I work (small graphics company) we're investigating the purchase of a new file server. Our lease is about up, and we're looking at buying a machine this time (please no comments on leasing! I didn't do it!)

We're debating the merits of SATA vs SCSI for our new server, and I'm here shopping for knowledgeable opinions. We have a network of about 15 Macs that work on often sizeable jobs from network drives. File sizes can be tiny (100k) to huge (upwards of 1 GB) and single jobs generally involve dozens of files. Fonts are also served centrally (we use Suitcase to manage the library; approximately 3400 full font families/~10k fonts).

We're currently at about 300G of space, do partial daily and full weekly backups. We're a 24 hour shop, so it's important how backups impact the server's ability to serve files. Currently our daily backups are 10-20G and weekly are ~200G.

We want to go to 500-750G of drive space and improve our ability to back up in a timely fashion. SCSI will likely have to be included in the machine, just for the tape backup (we're looking at an 8-tape changer, 800G capacity).

SO... things we're thinking about are:
1) life of SATA drives and SCSI drives in mid-high usage environments
2) advantages of SATA and SCSI (price being the prime difference I know right now)
3) merits of on-board controllers versus cards (processor usage? throughput being limited by bus speed for cards?)

Network throughput is also a prime concern; we'll be migrating to gigabit ethernet as we upgrade to G5s.

Also, any thoughts/experience with Windows Server 2003? We're currently using Windows 2000.

Thanks in advance!
 
Drive Lifetime: SCSI has a proven reliability that exceeds well past its wrranty date (usually 5 years for the retail packages). SATA is new and has yet to be proven, even with the 5 year warranty Raptor.

SCSI Advantages: Its expensive, especially your 15K rpm variants. Its also faster (higher sustained transfer rate), and the controllers are of higher quality. With a PCI-X RAID controller, you can push close to the theoritical 320MB/sec limitation that U320 has to offer, even with 10K rpm drives. SCSI backplanes can also be hot-pluggable, which is really nice.

SCSI Adapters: There is no difference between onboard and card based. The server Xeon boards' onboard SCSI are usually all PCI-X based.

Network: Most high end gigabit NICs are PCI-X based, as are the integrated ones on Server boards. If you get a Dual Gigabit card with a SCSI RAID array, you can easily sustain close to the theoritical (250MB/sec) speed. 10 Gigabit NICs should mark their debut sometime in 2005.
 
SCSI is pretty much your only option provided cost isn't a major obstacle. With mid to high use, you'll want at least 10k drives, and with the Raptor the only SATA option, it's too small for the total capacity you are looking for. Trying to squeeze 15-20 Raptors in one case along with the 4+ controllers required would be completely impractical. With SCSI, you can go with 4-6 146GB 10k drives and one dual channel U320 card (or onboard) which can easily be integrated into a single case.

Edit:
There is no reason to belabor the STR advantage of SCSI or RAID when dealing with network throughput. Even with dual Gigabit you're not going to see 150MB/s throughtput, letalone 250MB/s. If there are large numbers of systems accessing the server at once, then random access is vastly more important, and SCSI wins by huge margins over even the Raptor.
 
As to your question on Windows Server 2003, unless you already have a license, I see no need to upgrade if this is just a file server. Although I love Windows Server 2003, being a file server, and just a file server does not warrant an upgrade to Windows Server 2003. If you are planning on using other features in it that Windows Server 2003 improves on 2000, then I would stick with 2000. SMB networking is SMB networking. Setting up a File Server in Windows 2000 is basically the same as 2003. However, since you are already spending so much money (I figure 15k plus at least. I pulled this figure out of my head, so I'm probably way off, and the price is probably closer to 20-25k plus, isn't it?) on the file server itself, the upgrade to 2003 may be worth the extra $1-2 thousand.
 
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