Exchange 2010 and SATA disk drives: DS14 vs DS4243

[garruche]

Hi,

I found that TR-3824 states this:

Although the SATA disks might be a good fit for performance and capacity, NetApp recommends that when using SATA disks for Exchange deployments, they be used in a DS4243 disk shelf.

I've not been able to find out why DS4243 is preferred to DS14, and did not find a thread about this.

What is the real reason for this and is there a kb or doc explaining it ?

Thank you

Regis

[beaupre]

From what I have been told, DS4243 with SATA is preferred over DS14 because the DS14 with SATA has only one I/O channel and SATA cannot overlap I/O. DS4243 shelves have multiple I/O channels. (The actual number escapes me at the moment.)

So, what this means is that SATA disk on DS4232 should be able to support more IOPS per disk than on DS14.

Thanks,
Mark

[mheimberg]

The DS4243 uses 3Gb SAS connection, but has 4 channels, summarizing up to 12Gbps.

The whole architecture is different: SAS uses kind of star-architecture, providing a dedicated path to each disk, while DS14 still is serial.

As additional benefits it has a better ratio of disks/rackunit and more efficient powersupplies (at least compared to older DS14).

Mark

[garruche]

Thank you Mar and Markus for your answers.

Regis