Sims server spec

[User3204]

I wouldn't use SATA (or SATA 2,3,etc) in an important server like SIMS, as it may be as fast as SAS or SCSI, but the MBTF is lower for it, and you want to avoid the disks failing if at all possible. Although it may depend upon what sort of RAID level you're thinking about.

[Butuz]

7200RPM SATA is not faster than 10/15k SAS in database I/O which is basically what SIMS is.

I'd go for SAS every time.

Have a look at the graphs below. With both SAS and SATA the number of drives is king. So go for 8 x 73GB drives rather than 3 x 400GB drives.

Also - Read performance on SAS drives is far superior to SATA, whilst write performance is not quite so clear cut. Still, in your SIMS database the majority of operations will be reads, so SAS will win out.






Butuz

[Michael]

I don't think anyone disagrees that on paper SAS is faster than SATA, but in practice with a handful of users you really won't notice any difference. There is also a big price difference which can make all the difference with budgets squeezed.

[Butuz]

True - but to be honest I doubt there are that many secondary schools only using SIMS on a handful of copmputers nowadays. We used to run sims on 11 PC's, now it's 100.

And one thing those graphs do not show is the increased reliability of SAS drives compared to SATA.

Just my 2p, but I don't use SATA drives in any of my servers.

Butuz

[Michael]

For Secondary schools I agree SAS or SCSI, but then again, budgets are reflected accordingly. With that many users, 64bit would also have to be a consideration, or load balancing across multiple servers. I think we are definitely in agreement!