Re: SCSI disk: still the way to go?

riccardo(dot)inverni(at)gmail(dot)com ("Riccardo Inverni") writes:
>    I have to update a Linux box with PostgreSQL on it, essentially
> for data warehousing purposes. I had set it up about 3 years ago and
> at that time the best solution I had been recommended was to use
> SCSI disks with hardware RAID controllers.    Is this still the way
> to go or things have recently changed? Any other suggestion/advice?
> What about SAN?

You're probably better off with SATA, now.

SCSI disks may individually be faster and more reliable than SATA
disks, but you can probably get 3x as many SATA disks for the price of
the SCSI disks, and 3x more *probably* makes up for the deficiences,
given a good SATA host adapter. (Areca, 3Ware are all well regarded.)

SAN doesn't change the question; you'll still hold much the same
debate, whether to compose the SAN of SCSI or SATA disk, and the
answers will be similar.

The challenge you'll see on Linux is that Very Large Filesystems are
somewhat novel.

When we were trying to do DW stuff on Linux + Opteron + FibreChannel +
EMC DiskArray, we too frequently found filesystems keeling over. It
was neither cheap nor reliable.

At some point, I want to try FreeBSD+Opteron+Areca+SATA Array, and see
if that gives a better answer for this. I'm afraid I don't trust
Linux for this sort of thing anymore :-(.
--
let name="cbbrowne" and tld="ntlug.org" in name ^ "@" ^ tld;;
http://cbbrowne.com/info/finances.html
Rules of the Evil Overlord #32. "I will not fly into a rage and kill a
messenger who brings me bad news just to illustrate how evil I really
am. Good messengers are hard to come by."
<http://www.eviloverlord.com/>