SCSI or SATA Raid Array

markwombat

markwombat

markwombat

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Joined
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Hi Guys,

For a reliable storage solution to add to an existing file server would you recommend a SCSI drive or a Raid 5 SATA array? How easy is it to recover a Raid array in the event of drive failure and does data recovery from Raid 5 or 6 ever fail during recovery?

Thanks in advance, MW
 
A lot will depend on the current spec of the server itself - there's no point in investing in SATA kit if there's a decent SCSI RAID controller in the machine already. Budget is also a factor, if you're looking at a controller and drives then SCSI will be more expensive but will be faster although in a networked environment there may not be a need for absolute performance.

Recovery from a drive failure in a RAID 5 or 6 array is very simple, just a case of pulling the failed drive and connecting the new one, most (if not all) controllers these days will do an online rebuild so while the array performance will be degraded there won't be any downtime during the rebuild. I've not seen a rebuild fail but it's always a possibility since the disks are being heavily utilised over a fairly long period.
 
Thanks for the reply,

The server is a few years old now, and currently has only a 132GB SCSI drive in, and althought there is room for additional SCSI drives to be added I'm not certain if the SCSI controller is Raid supportive or not.

Would you suggest going for a Raid solution independant of whether SATA or SCSI is chosen?
 
Do you have any reasons in your own mind for implementing RAID? Realistically RAID will only give you two things - increased data transfer rates (RAID0, 5, 10 etc) or hardware redundancy (RAID1,5,10 etc). RAID won't protect you from data corruption, viruses or human error.

Unless there's a compelling reason which requires either of those I'd be tempted to go with a single extra disk and a decent backup solution (tape, external HDD etc).
 
I don't have any burning requirement to go for Raid no. So i think I'll go for just an additional drive.

If I was to add an additional SCSI drive to the SCSI cable do "master" and "slaves" exist in the SCSI world? I haven't had any dealings with them in the past so this is all rather new to me :P

Thanks for your help so far...
 
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