Current favorite FC HBA?

[Tom Samplonius]

On Sun, 16 Jul 2006, Ade Lovett wrote:

...
>> Wait a year. SAS/SATA will blow both away for nearline.
>
> Maybe, I'm not so sure.  Certainly in terms of throughput, SAS/SATA are 
> relatively close to their SCSI/FCAL counterparts, but I have a number of 
> systems where the throughput is pretty small, but the IO operations/second 
> are (very) high.  The SATA drives I've tried in that role have failed 
> miserably compared to their SCSI brethren.

   SAS then.  SAS is basically SCSI anyhow, just a different media type (serial 
versus parallel U320).  I think SAS will replace U320 quite quickly.  I noticed 
that HP is moving many servers to 2.5in SAS drives.  I know IBM would like to do 
the same, but there are supply shortages on 2.5in SAS drives.  And there aren't 
any 15K 2.5in disks yet (that I know of).

   SAS and 2.5in make a lot of sense for enterprise use.  Storage density has 
increased a lot, so the extra density can be used to put more spindles in less 
space.  Why use a 3.5in 10K 146GB disk, when you can use a 2.5in 10K 146GB disk? 
Imagine the space savings alone.

> -aDe

Tom