Mechanical Drive Step Up

[ToddW2]

So up until now I've leased all my servers/hardware but want to build something for myself to CoLo or use in my office with a couple vms.

I've been using WD Raptors since they came out, and then stepped up to the WD Black, and have loved the drives and the small % of failures I get is acceptable. I have htem in all my systems @home as well as my NAS, and friends/family systems. Can't go wrong with them so far for me.

Now that I want to build a more server-class system I`m wondering what the next step is in hard drives? For my OS drive I will be using a SSD - that I know already. I will also be using an Intel 510 SSD for my MySQL dedicated drive.

What about my storage / archive drives?
Will I notice improved performance over the WD Blacks for day-to-day operations/web sites/archiving by going with a SCSI ?

I want drives with at least a 3-5+ year warranty like the blacks have.

The data on the drives will for local development so it will be static html/images, php files, mysql db mirror possibly, etc. Also probably run Windows on one VM too.

As of right now no plan for a complex raid setup just mirroring.

I`m looking for long-long-life and high performance and trying to decide if it's worth it to get something other than the blacks.

I'd also entertain WD Green in raid for high-perofmrance, redundancy and cost savings if that is possible over the blacks (due to their lower cost). Warranty on the Green is not near as good but the cost is almost 50% so I can simply buy 1 or 2 spares.

I`m open to ideas.

As of right now no raid card, but I plan to add a areca ARC-1880ix-24-4G sometime in the future.

I guess what I`m looking to know is about mechanical drives that are better than the WD Black and have as good or better warranty and if they are worth the increase in cost over buying a WD Black?

I guess since I do a lot the better question(s) may be which are hte best mechanical drive for a server?
And what is the best-valued drive for a server?
And how do the above 2 compare to WD Black?

That way I cover high performance and as good or better.. since in reality I`m looking to do a good bit with the storage + performance aspects and they don't have to be combined, all in one. IE: I don't need a 15k rpm scsi drive for my archived data, but I do want a 5yr+ high reliable drive. But for DB or Web Files I want Highly Reliable and Fast.

-Todd

 

[drescherjm]

Will I notice improved performance over the WD Blacks for day-to-day operations/web sites/archiving by going with a SCSI ?

You mean SAS. Old parallel SCSI is only available to support old systems that still exist.

As of right now no raid card, but I plan to add a areca ARC-1880ix-24-4G sometime in the future.

Do you need raid? Remember that raid is no substitute for a backup.

 

[ToddW2]

You mean SAS. Old parallel SCSI is only available to support old systems that still exist.

Yep


Do you need raid? Remember that raid is no substitute for a backup.

I don't right now, that's why I`m not getting it now

In the future I`m going to have a couple different arrays for different purposes (MySQL for speed, Storage RAID for redundancy, another for fast VMs).

Multiple backups already in place - this will essentially be ANOTHER backup with some local development work going on it.

I`ll have other local systems too, one with a few other drives to hold archival backup from the system I`m building/upgrading, and others from our web archives. ALl my existing servers are already mirrored for redundancy and fast reload for low low downtime, and archived off-site to another datacenter. And then also downloaded someplace else. We store daily archives as well as monthly back to a year, and daily for a while too.

 

[ToddW2]

Sooo Anyone else have 02

 

[hotcrandel]

In general, most of the WD Black, Consumer drives are not good or approved for many types of hardware RAID, and some kinds of software RAID. These drives have features which can inadvertently cause drives to fall out of the array.

I would highly recommend you consult the Areca documentation and purchase approved drives; they will be more expensive but you will probably have less problems. I've used unapproved drives on different cards, and approved drives on different cards, and you will have less headaches with approved hardware. I'm currently running both Hitachi deskstar's and ultrastar's on Areca cards without issues. I would speculate that Western Digital RE series of drives are on the compatibility list for the Areca cards, but not necessarily black, blue, or green drives. I've jumped through some hoops with using some seagate drives that were removed from the "Approved" list for a 3ware card a while back, and I wrote a bit about everything I've had my fingers on here.

What you should consider is your traffic volume for your website; I would say start off with SATA drives mirrored, and if it has a lot of traffic/load, consider moving "busy" data to expensive disks [or SSD] with higher IOPS. You will get much better value for your dollar doing a bit more work.

Tell us about your traffic load and space requirements, and I can help you a bit more.

 

[ToddW2]

In general, most of the WD Black, Consumer drives are not good or approved for many types of hardware RAID, and some kinds of software RAID. These drives have features which can inadvertently cause drives to fall out of the array.

I would highly recommend you consult the Areca documentation and purchase approved drives; they will be more expensive but you will probably have less problems. I've used unapproved drives on different cards, and approved drives on different cards, and you will have less headaches with approved hardware. I'm currently running both Hitachi deskstar's and ultrastar's on Areca cards without issues. I would speculate that Western Digital RE series of drives are on the compatibility list for the Areca cards, but not necessarily black, blue, or green drives. I've jumped through some hoops with using some seagate drives that were removed from the "Approved" list for a 3ware card a while back, and I wrote a bit about everything I've had my fingers on here.

What you should consider is your traffic volume for your website; I would say start off with SATA drives mirrored, and if it has a lot of traffic/load, consider moving "busy" data to expensive disks [or SSD] with higher IOPS. You will get much better value for your dollar doing a bit more work.

Tell us about your traffic load and space requirements, and I can help you a bit more.

Well, we already lease an 8 core, 24gb DB server with raid5 or 10 and SAS drives and that's what this would be replacing. Were not even near capacity on it as our largest table is about 8gigs, and I have I think 14gb setup for InnoDB table cache.

The DB server supports about 25 "servers" ranging from other dedicated, shared, and VPS. Traffic varies obviously but since it's a DB server it's used on a variety of sites some getting as few as 10 a day some getting 100k a day + we also run our own web services through the DB server too.

Keep in mind I also do a LOT of data processing, organizing and re-structuring; the SSD locally has been AWESOME for this, can't wait to get one in the 'web'.

Also, we have 1 or 2 smaller DB servers (4gb, and 2gb ram dedicated) we will want to migrate to this. That's why I was looking at the one I posted with more ram for only 500 bucks more seems like a no brainer for future potential growth.

So, for MySQL for sure using Intel 510 120gb SSD because I have a new one still for this. Then a 40-60gb SSD for the OS, and probably a 2nd one to run RAID1 on for fast recovery time to get her back online, the mysql drive will get a backup in the future but for now I'd like to use 2 mechanical drives for backup. 1 for a somewhat ongoing backup, and 1 for archive. (+ We have off-site DB mirror and off-site archive backup already in place.)

I know 1TB drive's is more than plenty, probably 300gb would be fine with proper backup rotations could hold 6 months of data at current size even. So these mechanical drives for now won't need to be RAID. Thus was thinking of using 2x1TB WD Black I have already too.... unless I need a faster archive and backup drives.

I can't really provide any other site / usage information due to how it's used in MANY aspects.

Trying to keep it very affordable, very fast with room for growth, and redundant so that if something fails it's back online in <1 hour.

 

[hotcrandel]

Sounds like you can probably consolidate your database servers to a single server, probably have headroom for little bit of extra IO.

I don't see any reason you can't share OS with Database on a single pair of SSD's that is mirrored. Save you a few bucks, Operating systems IO usually is pretty low. I would recommend avoiding making single points of failure by using single SSD's without mirroring. Solid state is pretty amazing especially for database IO that is mostly reads. If you're attaching them to the ARECA card, make sure they are approved solid state drives.

I think the general consensus is that significant amounts of writes on non-enterprise class SSD will decrease their lifespan, where as mechanical disks have something closer to unlimited write endurance in comparison.

If your whole server exists on the the solid state drive(s), It shouldn't be a problem to use single, consumer grade SATA disks for on-site data backup and archive, especially since you said you have routine offsite backup. Even WD green drives should be fine.

One last thing that probably doesn't apply, If the server has different spindle speed drives [aka, some 15000RPM drives and some 7200RPM drives] you do not want to stack them on top of each other in the chassis.