Hello,

New to SUN hardware and I have a simple question. Do I have to use "SUN"
drives in something like a D1000 or can I use 15k seagate cheetahs from
anywhere?



-R

On Tuesday 18 November 2003 8:36 pm in comp.sys.sun.hardware Rob wrote:

> Hello,
>
> New to SUN hardware and I have a simple question. Do I have to use "SUN"
> drives in something like a D1000 or can I use 15k seagate cheetahs from
> anywhere?

It depends on what you need.

Sun drives have custom firmware which ensures that all drives
of the same nominal size are seen by Solaris as identical.

This means, for example, that a drive from any vendor can be
used as a hot spare in a RAID set.

The firmware in Sun's disk arrays is only tested with Sun
firmware in the drives. Others might work when fitted but
then cause problems the next time the system is patched.
Sun's Raid Manager RM6, for example, is notorious for biting
the unwary viciously on the arse at some future update
in such cases.

Sun disks are not cheap, but they are fully supported.
In general the data on your disks is always worth a lot
more than the drive, so why take risks by pinching pennies.

OTOH, for a simple single disk in a workstation or development
machine I often use 3rd party drives.

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> The firmware in Sun's disk arrays is only tested with Sun
> firmware in the drives. Others might work when fitted but
> then cause problems the next time the system is patched.
> Sun's Raid Manager RM6, for example, is notorious for biting
> the unwary viciously on the arse at some future update
> in such cases.

How about using non-sun disk arrays? Infortrend for Kingston for
example? Any issues there? I noticed that sun offers the 3310, but it's
seems overpriced compared to other units.

> Sun disks are not cheap, but they are fully supported.
> In general the data on your disks is always worth a lot
> more than the drive, so why take risks by pinching pennies.

Does sun even offer 15k drives?

> OTOH, for a simple single disk in a workstation or development
> machine I often use 3rd party drives.

Well, this would be used in a JBOD setup. I was planning to stick a
bunch of 15k drives (that I already have from another x86 project) in a
D1000 or similar.

-R

On Tuesday 18 November 2003 9:33 pm in comp.sys.sun.hardware Rob wrote:

>> The firmware in Sun's disk arrays is only tested with Sun
>> firmware in the drives. Others might work when fitted but
>> then cause problems the next time the system is patched.
>> Sun's Raid Manager RM6, for example, is notorious for biting
>> the unwary viciously on the arse at some future update
>> in such cases.
>
> How about using non-sun disk arrays? Infortrend for Kingston for
> example? Any issues there? I noticed that sun offers the 3310, but it's
> seems overpriced compared to other units.

You are paying for support and the availability of spares for the
life of the system.

Using unsupported items is always a risk. When something breaks
the 2 suppliers will usually blame eachother. Not a good idea
when an important system is down.

>> Sun disks are not cheap, but they are fully supported.
>> In general the data on your disks is always worth a lot
>> more than the drive, so why take risks by pinching pennies.
>
> Does sun even offer 15k drives?

Yes.

>> OTOH, for a simple single disk in a workstation or development
>> machine I often use 3rd party drives.
>
> Well, this would be used in a JBOD setup. I was planning to stick a
> bunch of 15k drives (that I already have from another x86 project) in a
> D1000 or similar.

A D1000 full of 15k disks is going to saturate the SCSI bus
under heavy load conditions. You will not see a performance
gain over 10k or even 7200 disks unless the system is lightly
loaded. But if you already have the drives ......

Be warned that all of the drives in a RAID set should be identical.
This will bite you when a drive is replaced or a hot spare
comes into use and is one cylinder smaller than the disk it is
replacing.

Assess your risks, evaluate the purpose of the system and the
potential business losses compared to the cost savings.
What will it cost you when (not if) a disk fails.

If the system is business critical you should have an all Sun
system, redundant cluster, and a platinum support contract.
For a programmers desktop the specification can be relaxed.

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