SCSI vs SATA Hih-Perf

Arno Wagner wrote:

Sorry, but that is BS. Itanium is mostly dead technology and not
really developed anymore. It is also massively over-priced. Xeons are
sort of not-quite 64 bit CPUs, that have the main characteristic of
being Intel and expensive.

You need to catch up with the times. You are correct about the original
Itaniums being dogs, but I'm talking about the new Itanium2 processors,
which are also 64-bit. As for Intel being expensive, you get what you pay
for. The new Itanium2 sytems are SWEEEEEEET!

I also know of no indications (except marketing BS by Intel) that
Opterons are unreliable.

It's being proven in the field daily. You simple don't see Opteron based
solutions being deployed by major commercial and governmental entities.
True, there are a few *novelty* systems that use many Opteron processors,
but they are merely a curiosity than the mainstream norm. That said, if I
wanted a dirt-cheap gaming system I would opt for an Opteron based SATA box.





Rita

Arno Wagner wrote:

In comp.sys.ibm.pc.hardware.storage wrote:
Arno Wagner wrote:
In comp.sys.ibm.pc.hardware.storage wrote:


One thing you can be relatively sure of is that the SCSI controller
will work well with the mainboard. Also Linux has a long history of
supporting SCSI, while SATA support is new and still being worked on.

For you access scenario, SCSI will also be superior, since SCSI
has supported command queuing for a long time.

I also would not trust the Raptors as I would trust SCSI drives.
The SCSI manufacturers know that SCSI customers expect high
reliability, while the Raptor is more a poor man's race car.


My main concern is their novelty, rather then their performance. Call
it a hunch but it just doesn't feel right to risk it while there's a
proven solid SCSI solution for the same price.


One more argument: You can put Config 2 on a 550W (redundant)
PSU, while Config 1 will need something significantly larger,

Thanks for your comments. I forgot about the Power. Definitely worth
considering since we're getting 3 of these servers and UPS sizing
should also play in the cost equation.

Power is critical to reliability. If you have a PSU with, say
50% normal and 70% peak load, that is massively more reliable than
one with 70%/100%. Also many PSUs die on start-up, since e.g.
disks draw their peak currents on spindle start.

also because SATA does not support staggered start-up, while
SCSI does. Is that already factored into the cost?

This I don't follow, what's staggered start-up ?

You can jumper most (all?) SCSI drive do delay their spindle-start.
Spindle start results in a massive amount of poerrt drawn for some
seconds. Maybe as much as 2-3 times the peaks you see during operation.

SCSI drives can be jumperd to spin-up on power-on or on receiving
a start-unit command. Some also support delays. You should be
able to set the SCSI controller to issue the start-unit command
to the drives with, say, 5 seconds delay between each unit or so.
This massively reduces power drawn on start-up.

SATA drives all (?) do spin-up on power-on. It is a problem
when you have many disks. The PSU needs the reserves to deal
with this worst case.

Would you do the world a favor and actually take ten minutes to research
your statements before you make them? All SATA drives sold as "enterprise"
drives have the ability to perform staggered spinup.

Arno

--
--John
to email, dial "usenet" and validate
(was jclarke at eye bee em dot net)

In comp.sys.ibm.pc.hardware.storage "Rita Ä Berkowitz" ritaberk2O04 @aol.com wrote:
Arno Wagner wrote:

Sorry, but that is BS. Itanium is mostly dead technology and not
really developed anymore. It is also massively over-priced. Xeons are
sort of not-quite 64 bit CPUs, that have the main characteristic of
being Intel and expensive.

You need to catch up with the times. You are correct about the original
Itaniums being dogs, but I'm talking about the new Itanium2 processors,
which are also 64-bit. As for Intel being expensive, you get what you pay
for. The new Itanium2 sytems are SWEEEEEEET!

You recommend a _new_ product for its reliability????
I don't think I need to comment on that.

I also know of no indications (except marketing BS by Intel) that
Opterons are unreliable.

It's being proven in the field daily. You simple don't see Opteron based
solutions being deployed by major commercial and governmental entities.

Which is a direct result of Intels FUD and behind-the-scenes politics.
In order to prove that something is unreliable it has to be used and
fail. It being not used does not indicate unreliability. It just
indicates "nobody gets fired for buying Intel".

So nothing is actually proven about reliability (or lack of)
of Opterons in the field.

True, there are a few *novelty* systems that use many Opteron
processors, but they are merely a curiosity than the mainstream
norm. That said, if I wanted a dirt-cheap gaming system I would opt
for an Opteron based SATA box.

That is certainly true. As allways the question is to get the
right balance for a specific application. If you have the money
to buy the most expensive solution _and_ the clout to make the
vendor not just rip you off, you certainly will get an andequate
solution. But you will pay too much. Not all of us can afford
to buy stuff the way the military does.

Arno

Arno Wagner wrote:

You need to catch up with the times. You are correct about the
original Itaniums being dogs, but I'm talking about the new Itanium2
processors, which are also 64-bit. As for Intel being expensive,
you get what you pay for. The new Itanium2 sytems are SWEEEEEEET!

You recommend a _new_ product for its reliability????
I don't think I need to comment on that.

Oh please, come on now! This is like saying BMW introduces a new car this
year and it is going to be a failure in the world for using cutting edge
technology that hasn't a single shred of old technology behind it. When you
lift the hood you still see the same old internal combustion engine that
they used for the last 50-years. The difference is they improved
manufacturing processes and materials to make the product better. They
didn't redesign the wheel for the sake of doing so.

Take a new Itanium2 box for a test drive and you'll open your eyes.

I also know of no indications (except marketing BS by Intel) that
Opterons are unreliable.

It's being proven in the field daily. You simple don't see Opteron
based solutions being deployed by major commercial and governmental
entities.

Which is a direct result of Intels FUD and behind-the-scenes politics.
In order to prove that something is unreliable it has to be used and
fail. It being not used does not indicate unreliability. It just
indicates "nobody gets fired for buying Intel".

Then again, if the box were being used in environments that were life
dependant such as on the battlefield, reliability is paramount over cost.
Intel has a proven track record for reliability in the field. I would feel
safe using an Intel solution over an AMD any day of the week.

So nothing is actually proven about reliability (or lack of)
of Opterons in the field.

Market share has a great way of defining reliability. It would seem that
the major players don't feel comfortable betting their livelihood on AMD.

True, there are a few *novelty* systems that use many Opteron
processors, but they are merely a curiosity than the mainstream
norm. That said, if I wanted a dirt-cheap gaming system I would opt
for an Opteron based SATA box.

That is certainly true. As allways the question is to get the
right balance for a specific application. If you have the money
to buy the most expensive solution _and_ the clout to make the
vendor not just rip you off, you certainly will get an andequate
solution. But you will pay too much. Not all of us can afford
to buy stuff the way the military does.

Define "pay too much"? Most people and I would rather pay too much upfront
instead of being backended with high maintenance and repair costs, not to
mention the disastrous outcome of total failure. Like I said, you get what
you pay for. If the military would go totally AMD than I would agree with
you. Till that day, AMD is not a processor to be taken seriously. Plus,
there resale value sucks!!!



Rita

Rita Ä Berkowitz wrote:

[nothing very significant]

One really needs hip-boots to wade through the manure of these last few
posts.

1. Opteron systems have reliability comparable to Xeon systems, and if
they lag Itanics by any margin at all it's not by much (Itanics do have
a couple of additional internal RAS features that Opterons and Xeons
lack, but the differences are not major ones).

2. While Intel didn't do as excellent a job of adding 64-bit support to
Xeons as AMD did with AMD64, once again the difference is not a dramatic
one.

3. The first Itanic wasn't just a dog, it was an absolute joke.
McKinley and Madison are much more respectable but still consume
inordinate amounts of power and are in general not performance-leading
products: while the newest Madisons managed to regain a very small lead
in SPECfp over POWER5 that's the only major benchmark they lead in (at
least where the competition has bothered to show up: HP has done a fine
job of carefully selecting specific benchmark niches which lacked such
competition, though been a bit embarrassed in cases where it
subsequently appeared), and Itanic often winds up not in second place
but in third or even fourth behind POWER (not just POWER5 but often
behind POWER4+ as well in commercial benchmarks), Opteron, Xeon, and/or
SPARC64 - and for a year or so the top-of-the-line 1.5 GHz Madisons
couldn't even beat the aging and orphaned previous-process-generation
Alpha in SAP SD 2-tier, though they're now a bit ahead of it (this was
the only commercial benchmark HP was willing to allow EV7 to compete in:
it made Itanic look bad, but they needed it to beat the POWER4 score
there).

And that's for benchmarks, where the code has been profiled and
optimized to within an inch of its life. Itanic is more dependent on
such optimization to achieve a given level of performance than its more
flexible out-of-order competition is, and hence falls farther behind
their performance levels in real-world situations where much code is not
so optimized.

4. Nonetheless, Itanic is not an abandoned product. While its eventual
success or failure is still to be determined, Intel is at least
currently still pouring money, engineers, and time into it (though
apparently not at quite the rate it was earlier: in the past year it's
cut a new Itanic chipset from its plans which would have allowed faster
bus speeds and axed a new Itanic core that the transplanted Alpha team
was building for 2007, and what those engineers are now working may or
not be Itanic-related).

- bill

Opteron is not a processor to be taken seriously ???? Any backing
with hard numbers for what you're saying ? We have a whole 64-node dual
opteron cluster running 64-bit applications for more than a year and
it's been not only reliable but given the nature of our applications
crucial in a time when Intel was sleeping in their 32-bit laurels and
convincing the industry and neophytes that 64-bit equals Itanium only.
I applaud AMD for their screw-intel approach giving floks like us a
great cost-effective 64 bit option. If the Opteron wasn't succesfull
Intel would have never come up with the 64-bit Xeon, their mantra would
have been "Buy Itanium". Have you tried to cost out a 64-node dual
Itanic lately ?? Moreover, our current file-servers are Xeon based and
we don't feel confident on their running 64-bit OS and/or XFS.

The only consideration I had for the Xeons was their wider choice of
mobo availability, and the new boards with 4x, 8x and 16x PCI-Express
options which might prevent PCI bus saturation in some extreme video
streaming or large sequential reads applications, which is not the case
in our scenario. You might also need 10GB ethernet to cope with such
data stream.

Parsifal

In article ,
"Rita Ä Berkowitz" ritaberk2O04 @aol.com wrote:

Arno Wagner wrote:

Sorry, but that is BS. Itanium is mostly dead technology and not
really developed anymore. It is also massively over-priced. Xeons are
sort of not-quite 64 bit CPUs, that have the main characteristic of
being Intel and expensive.

You need to catch up with the times. You are correct about the original
Itaniums being dogs, but I'm talking about the new Itanium2 processors,
which are also 64-bit. As for Intel being expensive, you get what you pay
for. The new Itanium2 sytems are SWEEEEEEET!

I also know of no indications (except marketing BS by Intel) that
Opterons are unreliable.

It's being proven in the field daily. You simple don't see Opteron based
solutions being deployed by major commercial and governmental entities.
True, there are a few *novelty* systems that use many Opteron processors,
but they are merely a curiosity than the mainstream norm. That said, if I
wanted a dirt-cheap gaming system I would opt for an Opteron based SATA box.

April Fool's a week early?

In comp.sys.ibm.pc.hardware.storage "Rita Ä Berkowitz" ritaberk2O04 @aol.com wrote:
Arno Wagner wrote:

You need to catch up with the times. You are correct about the
original Itaniums being dogs, but I'm talking about the new Itanium2
processors, which are also 64-bit. As for Intel being expensive,
you get what you pay for. The new Itanium2 sytems are SWEEEEEEET!

You recommend a _new_ product for its reliability????
I don't think I need to comment on that.

Oh please, come on now! This is like saying BMW introduces a new car this
year and it is going to be a failure in the world for using cutting edge
technology that hasn't a single shred of old technology behind it. When you
lift the hood you still see the same old internal combustion engine that
they used for the last 50-years. The difference is they improved
manufacturing processes and materials to make the product better. They
didn't redesign the wheel for the sake of doing so.

Take a new Itanium2 box for a test drive and you'll open your eyes.

Oh, I agree that it is powerful hardware. But you know, I rather
have that 10 machine cluster with 10 times the storage that can actually
do the job than this single, gold-plated big iron.

I also know of no indications (except marketing BS by Intel) that
Opterons are unreliable.

It's being proven in the field daily. You simple don't see Opteron
based solutions being deployed by major commercial and governmental
entities.

Which is a direct result of Intels FUD and behind-the-scenes politics.
In order to prove that something is unreliable it has to be used and
fail. It being not used does not indicate unreliability. It just
indicates "nobody gets fired for buying Intel".

Then again, if the box were being used in environments that were life
dependant such as on the battlefield, reliability is paramount over cost.
Intel has a proven track record for reliability in the field. I would feel
safe using an Intel solution over an AMD any day of the week.

So? From what I hear, getting people killed is preferred to
spending lots of money on most battlefields. And if you think
thet CPU reliability is the most important question, then
you cannot have much experience with software.

So nothing is actually proven about reliability (or lack of)
of Opterons in the field.

Market share has a great way of defining reliability.

Well, that is complete nonsense. Market share does not define any
technical characteristic. Market share could indicate some technical
problem, but in this instance it does not. It rather signifies
"we have allways bought Intel".

It would seem that the major players don't feel comfortable betting
their livelihood on AMD.

So? And what does that indicate exactly, besides that they just
continue to do what they always did, like any large, conservative
organisation? It does not say anything about the technological
quality of Opterons.

True, there are a few *novelty* systems that use many Opteron
processors, but they are merely a curiosity than the mainstream
norm. That said, if I wanted a dirt-cheap gaming system I would opt
for an Opteron based SATA box.

That is certainly true. As allways the question is to get the
right balance for a specific application. If you have the money
to buy the most expensive solution _and_ the clout to make the
vendor not just rip you off, you certainly will get an andequate
solution. But you will pay too much. Not all of us can afford
to buy stuff the way the military does.

Define "pay too much"? Most people and I would rather pay too much
upfront instead of being backended with high maintenance and repair
costs, not to mention the disastrous outcome of total failure.

If that were so, there would be hard numbers about this out there.
Care to give a reference to a technological study that shows
that AMD is less reliable than Intel to a degree that matters?

Like I said, you get what you pay for. If the military would go
totally AMD than I would agree with you. Till that day, AMD is not
a processor to be taken seriously.

As somebody with now perhaps ~10 CPU years actual usage on AMD CPUs
(mostly Athlons) under Linux I cannot agree. I have had troubles, but
not a single problem because of the CPUs.

Arno

In comp.sys.ibm.pc.hardware.storage flux wrote:
In article ,
"Rita Ä Berkowitz" ritaberk2O04 @aol.com wrote:

Arno Wagner wrote:

Sorry, but that is BS. Itanium is mostly dead technology and not
really developed anymore. It is also massively over-priced. Xeons are
sort of not-quite 64 bit CPUs, that have the main characteristic of
being Intel and expensive.

You need to catch up with the times. You are correct about the original
Itaniums being dogs, but I'm talking about the new Itanium2 processors,
which are also 64-bit. As for Intel being expensive, you get what you pay
for. The new Itanium2 sytems are SWEEEEEEET!

I also know of no indications (except marketing BS by Intel) that
Opterons are unreliable.

It's being proven in the field daily. You simple don't see Opteron based
solutions being deployed by major commercial and governmental entities.
True, there are a few *novelty* systems that use many Opteron processors,
but they are merely a curiosity than the mainstream norm. That said, if I
wanted a dirt-cheap gaming system I would opt for an Opteron based SATA box.

April Fool's a week early?

Probably suppressed machine rage. I know I have some. But then what
do I know, I use AMD CPUs and cheap drives. Probably deserve all
the problems I have ;-)

Arno

Arno Wagner wrote:

Take a new Itanium2 box for a test drive and you'll open your eyes.

Oh, I agree that it is powerful hardware. But you know, I rather
have that 10 machine cluster with 10 times the storage that can
actually
do the job than this single, gold-plated big iron.

Of course you would, but the majority of commercial and military entities
disagree with you.

Then again, if the box were being used in environments that were life
dependant such as on the battlefield, reliability is paramount over
cost. Intel has a proven track record for reliability in the field.
I would feel safe using an Intel solution over an AMD any day of the
week.

So? From what I hear, getting people killed is preferred to
spending lots of money on most battlefields. And if you think
thet CPU reliability is the most important question, then
you cannot have much experience with software.

Sorry, software is of no concern to me since that is the other person's
problem. But, then again, there are people whom traditionally blame hardware
related problems on the software. The anti-Microsoft crowd comes to mind.

So nothing is actually proven about reliability (or lack of)
of Opterons in the field.

Market share has a great way of defining reliability.

Well, that is complete nonsense. Market share does not define any
technical characteristic. Market share could indicate some technical
problem, but in this instance it does not. It rather signifies
"we have allways bought Intel".

Or more desirably, "we always sell Intel" because this is what our customers
that have a clue know what they want.

It would seem that the major players don't feel comfortable betting
their livelihood on AMD.

So? And what does that indicate exactly, besides that they just
continue to do what they always did, like any large, conservative
organisation? It does not say anything about the technological
quality of Opterons.

But it speaks volumes of the people purchasing the hardware. Not many want
to have egg on their face when the passing fad called the Opteron takes a
dump.

Define "pay too much"? Most people and I would rather pay too much
upfront instead of being backended with high maintenance and repair
costs, not to mention the disastrous outcome of total failure.

If that were so, there would be hard numbers about this out there.
Care to give a reference to a technological study that shows
that AMD is less reliable than Intel to a degree that matters?

I only go by what the majority wants and it surely isn't AMD. And most AMD
zealots wouldn't want to look at the hard numbers if they bit them in the
ass.

Like I said, you get what you pay for. If the military would go
totally AMD than I would agree with you. Till that day, AMD is not
a processor to be taken seriously.

As somebody with now perhaps ~10 CPU years actual usage on AMD CPUs
(mostly Athlons) under Linux I cannot agree. I have had troubles, but
not a single problem because of the CPUs.

I guess it boils down to your expectations of what you want from any
particular CPU. Like I said, if it's gaming and a simple home based MP3
server for the kiddies than I'll say that AMD is the only choice from a
sheer economics standpoint.



Rita