[Gllug] [Fwd: Server]

[Tethys]

Richard Jones writes:

>I've heard it said that SCSI systems are manufactured to higher
>quality tolerances than IDE systems. This hasn't been my experience -
>in my experience both are as bad as each other.

Different people, different experiences. I've had far more IDE drives
die early in their life than I have SCSI. YMMV.

>If you really believe that a SCSI and an IDE disk from the same
>manufacturer aren't just two identical spindles with different
>electronics tacked on the back, I have a bridge to sell you.

Yes, I believe that (based on the fact that I've never seen a 15K IDE
drive, so I doubt they could stick different electronics on one to
make it SCSI). Yes, current gen IDE disks and previous gen SCSI disks
may well share the same spindles. But if you're talking about the
merits of using SCSI over IDE, then you need to consider current gen
SCSI.

Yes, SCSI is hideously expensive. However, in my experience, you get
what you pay for. I haven't done any scientific tests, so all I can
give you is my subjective view, based on real world experience -- a
SCSI system will perform better and last longer than an IDE one.
Whether that justifies the extra cost is decision that needs to be
made on a case by case basis. We have a 3ware based machine for non
critical tasks, for example. But all our production machines are
SCSI. As Mike said, the costs of downtime far outweigh the extra
purchase price. That said, IDE RAID is blurring the distinction
somewhat, in that you can tolerate drive failures without incurring
downtime, and even if your IDE drives fail twice as often as your
SCSI drives, you're still in pocket, and a decent RAID controller
should help offset the extra CPU load that using IDE generates.

Tet

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