Servers and SATA drives

[Essence_of_War]

I was spec'ing a server from Dell for work. It's going to be a backup storage for simulation data that we produce, and we're planning on running ZFSonLinux for the storage pool.

We wanted to get all of the hardware from Dell, but I noticed that in their poweredge servers, their are no options for ordinary SATA drives. Is that standard now? Do any of the other big vendors allow you to spec SATA drives?

 

[XavierMace]

I'm not sure which Poweredge you're looking at but all the ones I've looked at have SATA options. That said, it's typically recommended you go with SAS drives.

 

[Coup27]

Isn't SATA officially only rated for 8 hours of operation per day?

I'm sure I read in a publication from WD once that SATA hard drives are only rated for 8 hours of operation per day, which if true is the reason Dell won't offer them in a server build.

 

[Dahak]

Isn't SATA officially only rated for 8 hours of operation per day?

I'm sure I read in a publication from WD once that SATA hard drives are only rated for 8 hours of operation per day, which if true is the reason Dell won't offer them in a server build.

I believe that is only a recent thing (last couple of years) and on a specific models.
I remember seagate did this on a drive model, but dont remember which one, or it could have been wd

think the reason why you cannot spec sata drives is
1) usually they are only available on low-end entry servers
2) cannot mix the bays
3) may need additional controllers as you many not beable to mix both drive types on 1 controller.

Its hard to say without knowing which server.


Just as a quick look, HP still allows you to configure theirs servers with either SATA or SAS
ML150 Gen9 or the ML350 Gen9

 

[PliotronX]

Isn't SATA officially only rated for 8 hours of operation per day?

I'm sure I read in a publication from WD once that SATA hard drives are only rated for 8 hours of operation per day, which if true is the reason Dell won't offer them in a server build.

Probably made up to drive more sales of overpriced "certified" hardware. One thing to keep in mind, depending on the PERC it will always flash an amber light warning at you for using such drives without any way to shut it off so if you also have alerts in OM set up for HDD errors, prepare yourself for Dell's BS. Also at one point, any virtual disk created with "uncertified" drives on a PERC would either flat out not work or throughput would be that of SATA-1 making it pointless.