Comments on: FATA drives http://storageadvisors.adaptec.com/2005/12/06/fata-drives/ Storage Solutions for Real World IT Professionals Sat, 21 Nov 2009 05:54:12 +0000 http://wordpress.org/?v=1.5.2 Comment on FATA drives by: yfeefy http://storageadvisors.adaptec.com/2005/12/06/fata-drives/#comment-4736 Tue, 27 Jun 2006 15:50:39 +0000 http://storageadvisors.adaptec.com/2005/12/06/fata-drives/#comment-4736 By the way, the EVA arrays in which FATA drives are used don't support RAID-6. The redundancy levels are VRAID0, VRAID1, and VRAID5. VRAID1 basically being a RAID10 implementation. The EVAs virtualization has an implementation that's probably not directly comparable to others, but provides similar failure protection (i.e., VRAID5 = RAID-5 etc....). Since data from each LUN is spread across all disks in a pool, there will be data with different raid levels on the same device. By the way, the EVA arrays in which FATA drives are used don’t support RAID-6. The redundancy levels are VRAID0, VRAID1, and VRAID5. VRAID1 basically being a RAID10 implementation. The EVAs virtualization has an implementation that’s probably not directly comparable to others, but provides similar failure protection (i.e., VRAID5 = RAID-5 etc….). Since data from each LUN is spread across all disks in a pool, there will be data with different raid levels on the same device.

]]> Comment on FATA drives by: yfeefy http://storageadvisors.adaptec.com/2005/12/06/fata-drives/#comment-4654 Mon, 26 Jun 2006 18:10:17 +0000 http://storageadvisors.adaptec.com/2005/12/06/fata-drives/#comment-4654 Question for Casey: In your real world experience, are you finding that the failure rates of FATA drives are much higher than FC drives, and is the failure rate usage profile dependant? Thanks. -Tom O'Toole Question for Casey:

In your real world experience, are you finding that the failure rates of FATA drives are much higher than FC drives, and is the failure rate usage profile dependant? Thanks.

-Tom O’Toole

]]> Comment on FATA drives by: Casey http://storageadvisors.adaptec.com/2005/12/06/fata-drives/#comment-1321 Thu, 11 May 2006 19:02:47 +0000 http://storageadvisors.adaptec.com/2005/12/06/fata-drives/#comment-1321 Tom, We aren't in an FC environment right now and are trying to get into a product that will give us the best performance for DB applications. We have looked at several products and the HP EVA4000 is one we are looking into. What products would you recommend that would be comparable in the SAS / SATA arena? Thanks Tom! C Tom,

We aren’t in an FC environment right now and are trying to get into a product that will give us the best performance for DB applications. We have looked at several products and the HP EVA4000 is one we are looking into. What products would you recommend that would be comparable in the SAS / SATA arena?

Thanks Tom!

C

]]> Comment on FATA drives by: Tom http://storageadvisors.adaptec.com/2005/12/06/fata-drives/#comment-914 Wed, 03 May 2006 19:51:57 +0000 http://storageadvisors.adaptec.com/2005/12/06/fata-drives/#comment-914 The 50% boost in performance going from FC to FATA and doubling the drive count is only if you stick with the same RAID level. Some folks would argue that FATA requires RAID-6 to overcome the lower MTBF and BER. With 100% random reads FATA RAID-6 would still be 50% faster than a FC RAID-5, but with 100% random writes FATA RAID-6 would be 50% slower. Also, FATA drives are single sourced from Seagate. There was an announcement from HP that they would be doing FATA drives, but apparently they're codeveloped with Seagate, and it looks like they're not shipping yet. So, if you already have a FC environment, then the discussion of FC or FATA is a good one. But if not, then you (and I don't mean YOU necessarily - just you in the generic sense) should be looking at SAS vs SATA. FC initiators and switches are much more expensive than SAS. Eventually the SAS and SATA initiators will be free out of the motherboard chipsets. And there are more drive vendors for SAS and SATA. To answer your orginal question: If you're already using FC, and SAS is out of the question, then "yes", you should look at using FATA. But make sure you check the reliability of these drives. If you're forced to use RAID-6, make sure your access pattern isn't too heavily slanted towards random writes. If so, you'll get killed in performance. Good luck! TT The 50% boost in performance going from FC to FATA and doubling the drive count is only if you stick with the same RAID level. Some folks would argue that FATA requires RAID-6 to overcome the lower MTBF and BER. With 100% random reads FATA RAID-6 would still be 50% faster than a FC RAID-5, but with 100% random writes FATA RAID-6 would be 50% slower.

Also, FATA drives are single sourced from Seagate. There was an announcement from HP that they would be doing FATA drives, but apparently they’re codeveloped with Seagate, and it looks like they’re not shipping yet.

So, if you already have a FC environment, then the discussion of FC or FATA is a good one. But if not, then you (and I don’t mean YOU necessarily - just you in the generic sense) should be looking at SAS vs SATA. FC initiators and switches are much more expensive than SAS. Eventually the SAS and SATA initiators will be free out of the motherboard chipsets. And there are more drive vendors for SAS and SATA.

To answer your orginal question: If you’re already using FC, and SAS is out of the question, then “yes”, you should look at using FATA. But make sure you check the reliability of these drives. If you’re forced to use RAID-6, make sure your access pattern isn’t too heavily slanted towards random writes. If so, you’ll get killed in performance.

Good luck!

TT

]]> Comment on FATA drives by: Casey http://storageadvisors.adaptec.com/2005/12/06/fata-drives/#comment-910 Wed, 03 May 2006 16:38:42 +0000 http://storageadvisors.adaptec.com/2005/12/06/fata-drives/#comment-910 So if we can achieve a 50% performance boost over FC drives, shouldn't we want to use the FATA drives? (all drives, FATA or FC, would be RAID 6) I guess I'm asking you for a reason why we shouldn't use FATA drives. It seems to go against most Storage Guru's conventional wisdom, but I think we may have a considerable performance advantage by using twice as many FATA drives. Thanks for the feedback Tom! So if we can achieve a 50% performance boost over FC drives, shouldn’t we want to use the FATA drives? (all drives, FATA or FC, would be RAID 6)

I guess I’m asking you for a reason why we shouldn’t use FATA drives. It seems to go against most Storage Guru’s conventional wisdom, but I think we may have a considerable performance advantage by using twice as many FATA drives.

Thanks for the feedback Tom!

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