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Some observations:<br>
<br>
<br>
<blockquote cite="mid200501261008.j0QA80Go025885@bluewest.scyld.com"
type="cite">
<pre wrap="">Date: Tue, 25 Jan 2005 13:42:05 -0800 (PST)
From: Alvin Oga <a class="moz-txt-link-rfc2396E"
href="mailto:alvin@Mail.Linux-Consulting.com"><alvin@Mail.Linux-Consulting.com></a>
</pre>
<pre wrap="">i'd add 1 or 2 cooling fans per ide disk, esp if its 7200rpm or 10,000 rpm
disks
</pre>
</blockquote>
Adding fans makes some assumptions:<br>
1) There is inadequate chassis cooling in the first place. If that is
the case, one should consider a better chassis.<br>
If the drives are not being cooled, then what else is also not properly
cooled?<br>
<br>
2) To add a fan effectively, one must have sufficient input of outside
air, and sufficient exhaust capacity in the chassis to move out the
heated air. In my experience the biggest deficiency in most chassis is
in the latter example.<br>
Simply adding fans on the front input side, without sufficient exhaust
capacity adds little real air flow.<br>
Think of most chassis as a funnel. You can only push in as much air as
there is capacity for it to escape at the back.<br>
More fans do not add much more flow, unless the fans are capable of
increasing the pressure inside the case sufficiently to force more air
out of the back. You average small axial fan generates extremely small
pressure. In effect the air flow will be stalled, in most cases.<br>
<br>
3) Adding fans requires some place to mount them so that the airflow
passes over the hard disks.<br>
Most chassis used in clusters do not provide that space and location.<br>
<br>
4) Adding fans often creates some additional maintenance issues and
failure points. Typical small fans have generally high spin rates, and
correspondingly high failure rates. If the survival of a hard disk
depends on the fan, and the fan has a short life what are you gaining
in terms of lifespan? A fan with a 1 year lifespan to cool a hard disk
with a 5 year lifespan is a waste of time, or, at best, a huge
maintenance burden.<br>
<br>
<blockquote cite="mid200501261008.j0QA80Go025885@bluewest.scyld.com"
type="cite">
<blockquote type="cite">
<pre wrap="">We have used mostly Western Digital (WD) drives for > 4 years. We use the
higher rpm and larger cache varieties ...
</pre>
</blockquote>
<pre wrap=""><!---->
8MB cache versions tend to be better
</pre>
</blockquote>
True, which is why WD sells those as their "Special Edition" (JB)
variant with 3 year warranty, and the 2MB (BB) variants with 1 year.<br>
<blockquote cite="mid200501261008.j0QA80Go025885@bluewest.scyld.com"
type="cite">
<blockquote type="cite">
<pre wrap="">We also used IBM 60GB drives for a while and some of you will have experienced
that mess ... approx. 80% failure over 1 year time frame!
</pre>
</blockquote>
<pre wrap=""><!---->
80% failure is way way ( 15x) too high, but if its deskstar ( from
thailand) than, those disks are known to be bad
</pre>
</blockquote>
The "bad drives" mainly came from their now defunct Hungarian plant.
The Thailand plant products had few problems.<br>
<blockquote cite="mid200501261008.j0QA80Go025885@bluewest.scyld.com"
type="cite">
<pre wrap="">if it's not the deskstar, than you probably have a vendor problem
of the folks that sold those disks to you
</pre>
</blockquote>
<br>
Maxtor drives have had very high failure rates in recent (3) years.
That probably prompted them to lead the rush to 1 year warranties 2.5
years ago. WD did very well in the market by keeping the 3 year Special
Edition drives available, and recently Seagate, then Maxtor came back
to add longer warranties, now generally 5 years.<br>
What is telling is that their product does not seem to have been
improved in design reliability. This is ALL about marketing.<br>
What is also worth considering is the question of will the company will
be around in 5
years to honor that warranty. With Seagate and Maxtor on a diet of
steady losses for at least 3 years it is worth considering. WD, OTOH,
have been making profit while selling 3-5 year warranty drives.<br>
<br>
<blockquote cite="mid200501261008.j0QA80Go025885@bluewest.scyld.com"
type="cite">
<blockquote type="cite">
<pre wrap="">WD 80GB drives in the field for 1+ years, [~500 drives] "ARRRRGGGG!" ~15%
failure and increasing. I send out 3-5 replacement drives every month.
</pre>
</blockquote>
<pre wrap=""><!---->
probably running too hot ... needs fans cooling the disks
- get those "disk coolers with 2 fans on it )
</pre>
</blockquote>
Agreed ( but see comment above), also he probably has the "cheaper" BB
model rather than the
better "JB" on those 80's<br>
<blockquote cite="mid200501261008.j0QA80Go025885@bluewest.scyld.com"
type="cite">
<pre wrap=""> </pre>
<pre wrap=""> </pre>
<blockquote type="cite">
<pre wrap="">I'm moving to a 3 drive raid5 setup on each node (drives are cheap, down time
is not) and considering changing to Seagate SATA drives anyone care to offer
opinions or more anecdotes? :-)
</pre>
</blockquote>
</blockquote>
Average. WD are slightly more reliable in our experience ( we sell
several thousand drives a year).<br>
As long as you stick to JB, JD, or SD models.<br>
Hitachi and Seagate tie for 2nd, Maxtor are last.<br>
BTW, Hitachi took over the IBM drive business, but most of the product
line is new, so these are not the same as the older infamous
"deathstar" drives.<br>
<blockquote cite="mid200501261008.j0QA80Go025885@bluewest.scyld.com"
type="cite">
<pre wrap="">== using 4 drive raid is better ... but is NOT the solution ==
- configuring raid is NOT cheap ...
</pre>
</blockquote>
Why? Most modern boards support 4 IDE devices and 4 S-ATA devices.<br>
Using mdadm to configure and maintain a RAID is trivial.<br>
Onboard "RAID" on integrated controllers is not standardized, and is
usually limited to RAID 0 and 1, whereas software RAID allows RAID 5,
6, and mixed RAID types on the same disks.<br>
Configuring RAID10 on a system entails twice as many drives, but
provides much greater reliability of data, while costing virtually no
overhead or performance loss.<br>
<blockquote cite="mid200501261008.j0QA80Go025885@bluewest.scyld.com"
type="cite">
<pre wrap=""> - fixing raid is expensive time ... (due to mirroring and syncing)
- if downtime is important, and should be avoidable, than raid
is the worst thing, since it's 4x slower to bring back up than
a single disk failure
</pre>
</blockquote>
I disagree. You have no downtime on a RAID if you incorporate a
redundant RAID scheme. If the interface supports
swapping out disks you need never shut down to deal with a failed disk.<br>
.<br>
If you have to change drives immediately when they fail, maybe you do
need a better controller.<br>
OTOH, shutdown time to change a disk on a decent chassis is under 1
minute.<br>
Depends on your needs.<br>
<blockquote cite="mid200501261008.j0QA80Go025885@bluewest.scyld.com"
type="cite">
<pre wrap=""> - raid will NOT prevent your downtime, as that raid box
will have to be shutdown sooner or later
</pre>
</blockquote>
Simply not true. As long as the controller supports removing and adding
devices, and as long as your chassis has disk trays to support
hot-swap, there is ZERO downtime.<br>
If you have redundant RAID you can delay the shutdown until the time
that is convenient to you. You have to shut down for some form of
scheduled maintenance at least once in a while.<br>
<br>
Price penalty is fairly light.<br>
For example, our 1U cluster node chassis have 4 hotswap S-ATA or SCSI
trays, redundant disk cooling fans, and you can add a 4 port 3Ware
controller and you pay a price premium of
only $280. Not including extra disks, of course.<br>
What is downtime worth to you is the main question YOU have to answer..<br>
<br>
<br>
With our best regards,<br>
<br>
Maurice W. Hilarius Telephone: 01-780-456-9771<br>
Hard Data Ltd. FAX: 01-780-456-9772<br>
11060 - 166 Avenue <a class="moz-txt-link-abbreviated"
href="mailto:email:maurice@harddata.com">email:maurice@harddata.com</a><br>
Edmonton, AB, Canada <a class="moz-txt-link-freetext"
href="http://www.harddata.com/">http://www.harddata.com/</a><br>
T5X 1Y3<br>
<br>
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