From owner-freebsd-chat Thu Aug 10 11: 3:33 2000 Delivered-To: freebsd-chat@freebsd.org Received: from smtp.nwlink.com (smtp.nwlink.com [209.20.130.57]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id AE43B37BAAB for ; Thu, 10 Aug 2000 11:03:19 -0700 (PDT) (envelope-from jcwells@nwlink.com) Received: from utah (jcwells@utah.nwlink.com [209.20.130.41]) by smtp.nwlink.com (8.9.3/8.9.1) with SMTP id LAA02485; Thu, 10 Aug 2000 11:02:20 -0700 (PDT) Date: Thu, 10 Aug 2000 11:14:39 -0700 (PDT) From: "Jason C. Wells" X-Sender: jcwells@utah To: Francisco Reyes Cc: Mike Tancsa , "Nicole Harrington." , "chat@FreeBSD.ORG" Subject: Re: 3ware IDE Raid. SCSI killer? In-Reply-To: <200008101614.MAA08561@sanson.reyes.somos.net> Message-ID: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Sender: owner-freebsd-chat@FreeBSD.ORG Precedence: bulk X-Loop: FreeBSD.org On Thu, 10 Aug 2000, Francisco Reyes wrote: > Although people usually think performance there is the other > real big factor.. cost. > As FreeBSD starts to make it's way into > corporations/organizations more and more it will be used in > places where a mix of performance and cost are considered. An > IDE raid may be good for that mix. If you are going to be spending money for multiple discs to create an array, you have decided that cost is reduced in importance compared to either performance or reliability or both. If you need to purchase a special card anyway (I haven't looked at the price of this IDE setup), it seems to me that cost becomes a much smaller factor. You double or quadruple your disc cost in either case. You buy a marginally cheaper interface card but take a performance hit with IDE compared to SCSI. SCSI is much more flexible with the number of discs connected, not to mention the ability to add a tape that can handle your needs in throughput and capacity. (RAID is not substitute for backups, IMHO.) The cost of even a moderately pricey server ($4,000) is small change for any business with at least two employees who are not the propreitor's brothers-in-law. One could get SCSI with RAID in a box for under $2,500 by my guesstimation that could handle any small LAN and its users. I don't see much benefit in this. Maybe you save a couple hundred bucks or ten percent on your server with some detracting issues? This sounds like a solution looking for a problem, as I have heard it said recently. This is merely my $.02. Thank you, Jason C. Wells To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-chat" in the body of the message