[kwlug-disc] Some thoughts on drives -- Re: Wanted: help in refining presentation

Tue Jul 24 15:00:10 EDT 2012

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The WD Red drives caught my attention, but the official documentation

http://www.wdc.com/wdproducts/library/SpecSheet/ENG/2879-771442.pdf

lists the rotational speed as "IntelliPower" which is not a float.  I
suspect they play a game similar to the Green drives which your RAID
controller may/not enjoy.

Definitely, for production purposes (other people's bits),
Constellations (SAS) or RE4 drives are the correct answer.  That said, I
have not seen WD Caviar Black disappoint over dozens of drive-years for
people wanting to save a few bucks and still have a 5 year warranty.

On 07/24/2012 02:36 PM, Cedric Puddy wrote:
> My experience with "Green" drives in arrays is that simply don't work in many cases. I tried
plugging one into one of my HP Proliant DL servers, and it didn't even
stay spinning long enough to be recognized when the array controller
initialized.
>
> I could get the array controller to see it (for about a minute) by hot
pulling and replugging the drive, then doing an immediate rescan of the
ports, but then it would spin down again and disappear.
>
> However they've implemented the firmware on those "Green" drives,
there are definitely controllers that do *not* know how to play nice
with them.
>
> Note that there is the new WD Red line, which is designed for 24/7 NAS
operations in the consumer market (even for the WD Black, they don't
come out and *say* that 24/7 operation is one of the design parameters).
>
> I tend to buy all Seagate Constellation drives myself, for NAS/server
purposes, which would be the equivalent of WD XE, RE, or RE4 series
drives (XE and RE SAS are 2.5", and RE4 units are 3.5"). Sometimes I
substitute a Barracuda (which I see as an equivalent of the WD Black
series).
>
> Also, if you are looking for long warranty's, be cautious at Canada
Computer and such -- in order to get the cheapest possible price, they
often resell "OEM" SKU's, which have no warranty at all from the
manufacturer (the idea is that if the unit breaks, you have to get
satisfaction from the OEM that you bought it from, and the Canada
Computer warranty is 90 days -- I've had that happen to me there.
>
> My normal distributors don't let me buy the OEM skus (I would need
special authorization, etc.), and I'm not sure how a street level
retailer would qualify as an "OEM" (given that they can't claim to be
manufacturing or integrating anything), so it was a pretty nasty shock
to find out that I had accidentally ended up with a costly paperweight.
>
> Now that I think of it, I should try and find the receipt/details on
that transaction, and complain to Seagate -- the more I think about it,
the more it seems that a retail store selling OEM SKU's like that is
just plain *wrong*.
>
> -Cedric
>
> On 2012-07-24, at 1:49 PM, L.D. Paniak wrote:
>
>>
> This is probably the chassis you would want today:
>
> http://www.supermicro.com/products/system/4U/6047/SSG-6047R-E1R36N.cfm
>
> "Green" drives in storage arrays tend to cause problems because they are
> always spinning down. The Western Digital Black series is a much better
> choice.
>
>
> On 07/24/2012 09:36 AM, Colin K wrote:
> >>> Just a follow up to my last post from my droid. The links to the
> >>> articles i mentioned above.
> >>>
> >>> Article version 1:
> >>>
>
http://blog.backblaze.com/2009/09/01/petabytes-on-a-budget-how-to-build-cheap-cloud-storage/
> >>> Article version 2:
> >>>
>
http://blog.backblaze.com/2011/07/20/petabytes-on-a-budget-v2-0revealing-more-secrets/
> >>>
> >>> Now just to get my hands on a chasis like that :P and find a stray box
> >>> of western digital green 2+terabyte drives sitting at the side of the
> >>> road and I'll be happy :P the multiplier backplanes last time i
> >>> priced them were close to 80$.
> >>>
> >>> On Tue, Jul 24, 2012 at 12:46 AM, unsolicited
<unsolicited at swiz.ca> wrote:
> >>>> le:
> >>>> - we're all running a web server in a vm appropriately isolated off,
> aren't
> >>>> we?
> >>>> - want to check out a <something>, and there's an appliance?
> >>>> - following best practices, we're all running pfsense, right? No,
> well how
> >>>> about doing so in a vm?
> >>>> - any of Kiwi's potential topics
> >>>> - probably many more
> >>>> - especially, and particularly with ESX, there's a certain mental
> distrust
> >>>> of the non-physical to overcome. Making people more comfortable with
> having
> >>>> one around, and care, feeding, and control, leads to all else.
> >>>> - serving up thin clients (PXE?) seems useful. Although such a
> presentation
> >>>> would probably spend most of the time on the nature of the
clients served
> >>>> up. Serve up xbmc for an evening's entertainment, reboot the next day
> to do
> >>>> 'real' work?
> >>>
> >>> _______________________________________________
> >>> kwlug-disc mailing list
> >>> kwlug-disc at kwlug.org
> >>> http://kwlug.org/mailman/listinfo/kwlug-disc_kwlug.org
>
>>
>>
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>
> | CCj/ClearLine - Unix/NT Administration and TCP/IP Network Services
> | 118 Louisa Street, Kitchener, Ontario, N2H 5M3, 519-489-0478
> \________________________________________________________
> Cedric Puddy, IS Director cedric at thinkers.org
> PGP Key Available at: http://www.thinkers.org/cedric
>
>
>
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