SBS2003 and SATA ?

[Topkapi]

I have just seen the statement below on another site specialising in SBS.

"Do not buy a server with an on board Sata Raid adapter and do not use Sata drives in a server. It just does not work or it will fail within no time. I have seen this happening over and over again. People want to save some money on hardware but in the end they pay it twice..."

I have to say after extensive "Googling" I have found no support for this view. From my own point of view ( and maybe being a little conservative in these things) I would tend to go for a SCSI solution. However I am about to implement a an SBS2003 system where money is extremely tight and wondered what other peoples experiences are.

Thanks in advance for any feedback

 

[pandster]

Hi, I have run SBS on SATA - it was on WD Enterprise 10K drives and it worked fine. We did move to SCSI recently but it ran for 2 years without problem. We did also use a Apadtec SATA RAID card rather than an on board variety. I would not recommend the on board RAID as if you do have problems your choice of Motherboard would be limited and could mean you need to rebuild the server and restore data from backup. If you use a readily available RAID card and you are happy with the performance then SATA is a perfectly sound solution.

 

[ShackDaddy]

I've had no issues with SATA whatsoever. Half the servers I deploy are Dells though, and they typically use SCSI. But the other half using SATA haven't given me problems. The servers I've built using SATA (probably five or so) haven't ever had a drive failure in the last three years. Knock on wood.

Could be that some mboard vendors do a better job with their onboard RAID controllers than others though.

ShackDaddy
Shackelford Consulting

 

[PHV]

do not use Sata drives in a server
I have many customers using Dell PowerEdge servers with SATA disks and SCO OSR6.0 (unix): no problem yet, despite the app is very I/O intensive.

Hope This Helps, PH.
Want to get great answers to your Tek-Tips questions? Have a look at FAQ219-2884 or FAQ181-2886

 

[58sniper]

Just remember that SATA drives are much slower than SCSI.

Pat Richard, MCSE MCSA:Messaging CNA
Microsoft Exchange MVP
Want to know how email works? Read for yourself -

http://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc2821.txt

 

[Topkapi]

Thanks for all those views. Much appreciated!

 

[wahnula]

topkapi,

I have read that also from "the magical M&M's", the dutch girls that run the smallbizserver website, that charges 99 Euros/year to join and have access to their guides. I fell for it last year, thinking it would be a good resource but will not be renewing. I get better and faster answers here. Sometime there I get NO responses. Plus no showercam! (Sorry)

Remember that this is their experience & opinion, nothing more. Read this:

http://www.usenix.org/events/fast07/tech/schroeder.html

to find out that the most recent study says all hard drives are about the same durability-wise. Now, I have had problems with ONE onboard SATA RAID controller in the past, most notably the Sil 3114 built into my Asus K8N-DL board. The nForce controller (also onboard) worked like a charm from day one. Adding a 3Ware SATA controller solved it. Maybe this is what they are referring to, the onboard controllers being wimpy, not the drives.

As for SATA's robustness, how's this: My hand recently slipped while working inside a PC case, breaking the SATA jack completely OFF the HDD PCB, leaving only the gold strips hanging out. I slipped the strips back into the broken socket and the drive works fine. Now that's robust!

I think their statement is SCSI elitism. I have seen entire datacenters running nothing but SATA. If you have a dependable controller, why spend the extra cash for SCSI or SAS? As 58sniper pointed out, speed is the only reason...

Tony