off topic but... for foxpro, ide vs scsi?

[joebloeonthego]

buying a new server here, and I was wondering if the advantage of scsi would be great enough to warrant the cost when running a foxpro (and possible upgraded to sql) db. I was told that if you're db is only 1-2 gb (as ours is) and most actions are only on a few mbs here and there (probably most of them, there's a couple >100mb tables, but most are small), that a IDE raid would be more than good enough. It'll be about $1000 more to go scsi and end up with much less space, so I'd only want to do it if it was worth it. I just don't want to go scsi because, 'it's a server, they're always scsi'.
There's 20 people here, but probably never more than 10 people using it at a time if that.

any opinions?

thanx!

 

[ramani]

Hi

I agree with the ide that an IDE drive will do. However, IDE drives with 7200 RPM harddisks provide a better seektime and you should go for that. The price difference between 5400RPM and 7200RPM harddisks are almost neglible when we think of a PCs cost. 5400RPM harddisks are slower harddisks while 7200RPM ones are faster.

Also, you can check with the harddisks specification. Some of the harddisks come with some harddisk cache and they are smoother and better for read write operations.

Again, different brand harddisks give slightly different performances in terms of seek time. Go for the lower seek time harddisks.



ramani
(Subramanian.G)

http://winnersoft.coolfreepages.com/

 

[clarkrj]

If you setup your indexes correctly FoxPro is so fast the difference shouldn't be noticable.

Unfortunatly some programmers don't & end up buying extra powerfull hardware to compensate for the poor code.

If you are using native foxPro tables & the network fails it is possible to corrupt tables -- this is why SQL server is so popular but even that can be overcome with BEGIN TRANSACTION, END TRANSACTION & the sensible use of buffers.


Rich

 

[joebloeonthego]

if IDE it'd be probably 4 120GB 8MB cache 7200rpm WD's with the three year warranty (app. $600 cdn). If scsi, probably 4 36GB 10,000 (haven't checked out brands yet, but around $1100). I think with the ide's I'd raid them so that I had a total mirror (240gig), and the scsi, 3 and 1 for 100gig. All that extra space isn't going to help that much seeing as the tapes are probably only going to be 40gig...

 

[ramani]

Hi

You are talking about few mb tables leaving a couple of tables of 100mb. So what are you going to do with 120GB x 4 numbers and raid tech..?

With the specifications you have, it is enough to go with 120GB x 2 no. One mirroring another and that will do.

If you are thinking about server software to stay in a separate harddisk to improve slight performance benefit you may get by that, what you need is another, max. 40GB 7200 RPM harddsik for that purpose.

Once it is a sigle harddisk, no question of any raid.

That is enough for small applications, unless you are talking about many tables nearing 1 GB each etc.
(VFPs limit is 2 GB per table) and todays harddisks are far more of capacity than what in general is required for DATA applications.



ramani
(Subramanian.G)

http://winnersoft.coolfreepages.com/

 

[joebloeonthego]

well, there's at least a couple hundred tables, 1 is 1GB (but gets regularly trimmed down to 600MB or so - most of the size is a redundant memo field), 1 42MB, 1 30MB, 10 5-15MB, and the rest <5MB.

I agree that 120G disks are overkill, but they're so cheap (30-40bucks more than a more reasonable size) why not?

and that's a good point about just one disk and mirrored to a second, but I thought with the striping you get performance increase?

But the general concessus seems to be that IDE is fast enough (for the application) that scsi is not worth the cost?

 

[dbMark]

SCSI is optimized for multiple users and threads and can be CPU independent. There is a reason it is still widely used, but in your case you can try to get by without it, especially with newer boards now offering simple raid options and the capability to connect more than 2 IDE drives. (Don't forget to do regular backups!) I have over 100GB RAIDed on a string of SCSI drives and a server with 80 users, usually only at 2-10% of capacity except for heavy data transfers.

Keep in mind that IDE and SCSI have a long history of incompatibility due to IRQ conflicts or whatever. So don't try mixing them in one computer.

Believe it or not, Gigabit network cards and switches do make a difference. We have some users cutting their time in half for some intensive processing just by upgrading from 100Mb to 1000Mb. Since there could be a bottleneck at the server's LAN connection, see if making that card and its switch gigabit-enabled will speed it up.

http://www.tomshardware.com/storage/20010129/u160scsi-01.html

http://www.hardwarecentral.com/hardwarecentral/tutorials/43/1/