[TriLUG] Disk subsystem recommendations

[Jason Watts]

I was thinking of VMWare esx server.  from what I am reading on the site,
its not exactly how it was explained to me by a friend.  it still sounds
like it will be low resource intensive compared to vmware server with a bit
more control.

On Wed, Nov 25, 2009 at 5:13 PM, Joseph Tate <dragonstrider at gmail.com>wrote:

> Seek times on HDDs AVERAGE 8-9 ms.  The Intel SSD has an 85
> microsecond latency (constant time).  The only place where Flash SSDs
> do NOT outperform HDDs at this stage is in long sequential writes.
> Check out the chart here for relative performance/cost:
> http://www.storagesearch.com/ssd-ram-v-flash.html (it's a vendor
> suppplied chart, so take with a grain of salt).
>
> On Wed, Nov 25, 2009 at 4:45 PM, Clay Stuckey <claystuckey at gmail.com>
> wrote:
> > The tricky thing is that there are several factors to disk performance.
> You
> > have seek time (how much time it takes to find the data) then you have
> the
> > read/write MB/s that is quoted. This is typically sequential read/writes.
> I
> > expect you will have a mix of sequential and unordered read/writes in the
> > real world.
> >
> > While raid-0 does increase your transfer rate, you are still limited to a
> > single spindle. This means your host OS and VM(s) will be fighting for
> head
> > time. I have been running 3 fast sata drives in a raid0 for a while and
> have
> > felt that I should have much better performance. That was until I
> realized
> > that I can only get 1 piece of data at a time. I just recreated my
> volumes
> > as 3 single drives. I have the host os on 1. The other 2 drives will each
> > get a vm. I expect I will see a major performance increase for my
> situation.
> >
> > If your host/guest machines are performing normal operations (ie: many
> small
> > read/write operations), it would seem that seek time and separate
> spindles
> > is what you need.
> >
> > I don't know how solid state drives compare with platter drives. Maybe
> they
> > can read/write more than one item at  a time.
> >
> > I will let you know how my performance works out next week.
> >
> > Clay
> >
> >
> >
> > On Nov 25, 2009, at 4:36 PM, Ron Kelley wrote:
> >
> >> x2 on the SSDs.  $489/ea for the Intel 160GB G2 SSDs (zipzoomfly.com).
> >>  Put a pair in RAID-0 for $1K.  Very fast and should last a long time.
> >>
> >> -Ron
> >>
> >>
> >>
> >> On Nov 25, 2009, at 4:31 PM, Joseph Tate wrote:
> >>
> >>> I don't think you want the overhead of LVM.  I'd stick with straight
> >>> partitions.
> >>>
> >>> Why not go solid state disks?
> >>>
> >>> On Tue, Nov 24, 2009 at 10:02 PM, btncix btncix <btncix at gmail.com>
> wrote:
> >>>>
> >>>> I don't know much about VMWare nor much about virtualization, but if
> >>>> your
> >>>> main concern is performance, I would suggest you keep RAID-0 and
> create
> >>>> separate partitions. If you're worried about flexibility with hard
> drive
> >>>> partitions, look into LVM for your root partitions and logical
> >>>> partitions
> >>>> for your boot partitions. Of course, this more difficult to setup than
> >>>> what
> >>>> you were thinking about, but it let's you keep RAID-0 and still create
> >>>> your
> >>>> VMs with direct physical access to hard drive.
> >>>> --
> >>>> TriLUG mailing list        :
> >>>> http://www.trilug.org/mailman/listinfo/trilug
> >>>> TriLUG FAQ  : http://www.trilug.org/wiki/Frequently_Asked_Questions
> >>>>
> >>>
> >>>
> >>>
> >>> --
> >>> Joseph Tate
> >>> Personal e-mail: jtate AT dragonstrider DOT com
> >>> Web: http://www.dragonstrider.com
> >>> --
> >>> TriLUG mailing list        :
> >>> http://www.trilug.org/mailman/listinfo/trilug
> >>> TriLUG FAQ  : http://www.trilug.org/wiki/Frequently_Asked_Questions
> >>
> >> Thanks,
> >>
> >> -Ron
> >> rkelleyrtp at gmail.com
> >>
> >> --
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> >
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> >
>
>
>
> --
> Joseph Tate
> Personal e-mail: jtate AT dragonstrider DOT com
> Web: http://www.dragonstrider.com
> --
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