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We are now eligible for a variety of benefits we provide directly to our clients, including direct access to IBM’s team of Client Technical Specialists, exclusive IBM Storage Specialty education, priority access to IBM’s Business Partner TechLine support, and additional access to IBM System Storage product pools for use in sales demonstrations, proof-of-concepts, in-house education and training.

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Question:

Do you know of a study of like 2.5” 10K drives against 3.5” 15K drives? (2.5” 10K 600GB vs. 3.5” 15K 600GB drives) I keep getting like answers, but no real documentation to back it up.

Answer:

Before I begin, I would like to point out that the disk drive is not 100% responsible for the performance of a storage subsystem. You cannot predict the performance of a storage subsystem by the drives alone. Meaning that two different subsystems, with the exact same drive type and count will provide different performance levels. The “secret sauce” is in the controller firmware, and how it handles the I/O’s from the host. This is how the DS3500 can get about 308 IOPS/drive on the SPC benchmark (attached). I’m not saying that a system with faster drives will not perform faster, what I’m saying is that there is a lot more that goes into the formula than just the drive.

For the proposed question, I’ve attached a couple of Seagate Product Manuals. I’ll warn you now that they contain a ton of interesting information with respect to the functional operation of the drives (or at least some may find them interesting).

The corresponding web sites are:

Seagate Cheetah  http://www.seagate.com/ww/v/index.jsp?name=st3600857ss-chta-15k.7-sas-fips-600gb-hd&vgnextoid=8ca77f9853dc9210VgnVCM1000001a48090aRCRD&locale=en-US&pf=1#tTabContentSpecifications

Seagate Savvio  http://www.seagate.com/ww/v/index.jsp?name=st9600004ss-savvio-10k.4-sas-6gbs-600-gb-fips-hd&vgnextoid=ef4c68da2cdc9210VgnVCM1000001a48090aRCRD&locale=en-US&pf=1#tTabContentSpecifications

For a little quick math: The formula I use is IOPS = 1000 (ms in a second)/(avg seek + avg latency). I’ll ignore the transfer time, as IOPS are small.

IOPS Savvio = 1000/(3.8+3.0)=147.

Note, I believe the 2.5”, 300GB, 10Krpm drive is what used for the attached SPC-1 benchmark with 308 IOPS. Yes, that is more than twice the expected average performance on a per drive basis. That is the effect of the controllers “secret sauce” with caching, sorted writes, stripe-aligned volumes, etc.

IOPS Cheetah=1000/(2+3.4)=185.

So, as you can see, for half the power (we all want to be green) and half the footprint, you get about 80% of the performance in this example.The one interesting thing I noticed is that the MBTF for the 3.5” drives is 1.8Million hours, and the 2.5” MBTF is 2Million hours.

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XiV Gen3 uses a patented grid architecture to process high-transaction-type workloads, features several hardware improvements, plus a revamped user interface, multi-system monitoring, and improved replication.  Check out the article here.

Link to full article:

http://finance.yahoo.com/news/New-NetAppR-SnapProtectR-iw-2155566832.html?x=0&.v=1

An expandable, high performance, highly scalable system offering 60 drives with dual controllers in 4U at an entry-level starting price.

• High-density SAS controller subsystem
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Each IBM Storwize V7000 Disk Control Enclosure has the ability to attach and manage external storage devices on the SAN in the same way as the SAN Volume Controller. To authorize use of this function, the user licenses the IBM Storwize V7000 External Virtualization Software, 5639-EV1.

Subsequently, the prices for a 2, 3, 4, or, 5-Year Maintenance Registration were also cut in half.

Call thinkASG at 949-777-0400 to learn more.

IBM Main Storwize Intro Page URL:
(there are some videos on this page)

IBM Product Page for Storwize

Link to Storwize Data Sheet

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