So I have a little side project I'm working on, utilizing 3 Dell C2100 servers, each with 2 120GB SSD's in RAID 1 for the OS, 8 4TB drives, and 4 additional 60GB SSD's. These 3 servers will be running Ceph, so each will have 8 OSD's and 4 SSD journal drives.
I'm also hoping to run OpenStack on the same boxes (which have dual Xeon L5630's, 24GB RAM, and a PERC H300 controller), but may have to double the RAM on each to do so nicely. Probably use Mirantis to manage the deployment, but that's outside the point of this post.
Anyway, I'm having an internal struggle deciding which drives to buy. Unfortunately, I don't have the cash to go out and buy 24 drives all at once, so I need to buy a few at a time. Once I get to 4 4TB drives per host with 2 of the journal SSD's, I will start building out the servers and add additional drives later, but I need to decide now on which drives to buy.
I keep bouncing back and forth between enterprise grade and consumer grade, but I don't really see the benefits of going enterprise. Sure, enterprise drives are generally rated at 10^15 URE, where as consumer drives are 10^14, but length of warranty is much more concerning. I'd prefer 5 year warranties, but 3 years are the minimum.
Price wise, I'd like to stick around $150/drive, or less. For a 4TB, that should be doable, but larger than 4TB likely won't be an option because of cost. Even using 8 4TB drives per node, with a replication factor of 2, I'm still getting ~16TB of usable storage per node. 3 nodes would give me ~48TB of storage, when I currently only have ~12TB of data. My fourth node could be 3 years away, and pack in 8TB drives or something like that, and make expansion easy in the future.
Sorry for the rambling. I'm currently considering the Toshiba MD04ACA400, though. I've got several Toshiba DT01ACA200's and DT01ACA300's, that have been running over 2 years now without issue. I like Toshiba, and they have been pretty solid in my experience. I'd love to get WD RE's, or HGST Ultrastars, but I don't think paying the additional money is really worth it. So go for the MD04ACA400? Something else?
I'm also hoping to run OpenStack on the same boxes (which have dual Xeon L5630's, 24GB RAM, and a PERC H300 controller), but may have to double the RAM on each to do so nicely. Probably use Mirantis to manage the deployment, but that's outside the point of this post.
Anyway, I'm having an internal struggle deciding which drives to buy. Unfortunately, I don't have the cash to go out and buy 24 drives all at once, so I need to buy a few at a time. Once I get to 4 4TB drives per host with 2 of the journal SSD's, I will start building out the servers and add additional drives later, but I need to decide now on which drives to buy.
I keep bouncing back and forth between enterprise grade and consumer grade, but I don't really see the benefits of going enterprise. Sure, enterprise drives are generally rated at 10^15 URE, where as consumer drives are 10^14, but length of warranty is much more concerning. I'd prefer 5 year warranties, but 3 years are the minimum.
Price wise, I'd like to stick around $150/drive, or less. For a 4TB, that should be doable, but larger than 4TB likely won't be an option because of cost. Even using 8 4TB drives per node, with a replication factor of 2, I'm still getting ~16TB of usable storage per node. 3 nodes would give me ~48TB of storage, when I currently only have ~12TB of data. My fourth node could be 3 years away, and pack in 8TB drives or something like that, and make expansion easy in the future.
Sorry for the rambling. I'm currently considering the Toshiba MD04ACA400, though. I've got several Toshiba DT01ACA200's and DT01ACA300's, that have been running over 2 years now without issue. I like Toshiba, and they have been pretty solid in my experience. I'd love to get WD RE's, or HGST Ultrastars, but I don't think paying the additional money is really worth it. So go for the MD04ACA400? Something else?