SATA SDD vs SAS HDDs

[toffee_paul]

Hi all,

 

Looking at utilising 4 x enterprise-grade SATA SSDs in a RAID 10 instead of SAS HDDs in our new server. Has anyone had any negative experiences going down the SATA SSD route?

 

I know SSDs are so much faster than HDDs but when it comes to RAID and comparing the two I've not been able to find a lot of info about the performance gains over SAS HDDs when using the same RAID config.

 

Thanks

[ICTDirect_Dave]

You'll have no issues with speed or with building the sata ssds into an array.

 

You'll want to check that these ssds are onthe list of supported drives for your server and storage controller, however.

Otherwise you'll likely have the fans running at full-tilt all the time.

[steveg]

Worth also checking the endurance rating of the drives. Enterprise ones it shouldn't be a problem, but some of the cheaper ones have relatively low endurance ratings, depends what you will be doing with the server.

[toffee_paul]

They are drives that are in the server spec document so no issues in terms of compatibility. They are Lenovo ThinkSystem 2.5" 5300 Mainstream SATA 6Gb Hot Swap SSD drives. There's the Entry, Mainstream and Performance ranges. There's no way we could stretch to the Performance range.

This will be a storage for a new Hyper-V host. DCs, WSUS, Impero Server, etc. I'd normally go with SAS but this is our first new server in quite a while so wanted to see how well SATA SSDs compare against SAS HDDs. I know the SSD vs HDD argument is a pointless one as SSDs have obvious speed advantages and are now enterprise-grade, which hasn't always been the case. I was more interested in the SAS vs SATA argument. SATA as a protocal has been around for years and SAS as the successor to SCSI is much more efficient. I'm wondering if the speeds SSD gives over HDDs makes the SAS vs SATA argument a moot point.

[ICTDirect_Dave]

You'll definitely find the SATA SSDs quicker in an array versus a similar number of SAS HDDs in the same configuration. You'd see eve more performance gains using SAS SSDs, but those cost an arm and a leg still!