15k SAS drives

httpzoom

Hey Guys,

When you have been looking into providers and things like that are 15k SAS drives the normal within this industry?

jhadley

They are among the higher end providers.

Naruto

Are 10k SAS drives higher end providers?

jhadley

Higher end than 7.2K, lower end than 15K :P

I'm with Gandi at the moment and I think they use 10K drives in RAID60.

httpzoom

After trying to save DMBhosting we've been looking at starting up a lowend brand and thinks its viable etc.

We've just been priced up a server with 6 15k SAS drives that we'll run in Raid 10 or 5.

I'm just wondering if we should lower the drive spec and save ourselves a little bit of money :)

jhadley

For LEB I would use 7.2K drives in RAID10 - I think most providers here use them and I think you'll get more business by offering more space for less money.

Bear in mind that although a lot of people here like to run lots of dd tests for some unknown reason, a decent percentage are just VPN users.

Let me know if you need any help setting up :)

httpzoom

Thanks for the info. Looking at alot of hosts they offer between 15gb and 20gb on their 256mb VPS for around 4-5 pounds per month.

Is that the industry normal?

I'm just thinking if they oversell memory a little they'd then have 100 VPS on a single server with a 2TB in raid10 surely that makes the IO take a massive hit etc.

jhadley

If you plan to put 100 (small) VPSs on a node then assuming nobody's abusing the system you'll probably want 8x 7.2K or 4x 15K drives in RAID10 and a decent RAID card.

The main IO usage you'll get is immediately after you get listed and everyone's doing their dd tests. It'll die down after that as most users here don't run IO-intensive applications, and if they do it's best to upsell them to something else.

HTH

Naruto

VPS6.net has 10k SAS with RAID60.

Damian

@httpzoom said: I'm just thinking if they oversell memory a little they'd then have 100 VPS on a single server with a 2TB in raid10 surely that makes the IO take a massive hit etc.

Spend more on your disk I/O, less on your memory, disk space, and CPU power. We have an 8-core node with 24gb of ram serving 40 VPS containers, and they're using a total of 3.9gb of ram with a node load average of 0.04, while maintaining disk i/o in the 140 to 170mb range.

httpzoom

Thanks for the advice I'm kinda getting stuck in doing this for our Other VPS / Hosting nodes and maybe going to cost myself a little bit of money.

But I think I can squeeze a little bit of money out of each VPS node with have with 32 customers and then maybe once we get a good rep people will use our premium service. Sort of like free advertising.

My setup was going to be: Quad Core (or x2) 8-16GB Ram 6x146GB 15k SAS drives

Quite high startup to purchase the hardware, but again this is advertising cost and we can break even without having to oversell. Our support team is already in place and they get paid enough doing nothing right now!

Are we looking at this the wrong way and have a stupid fault in the plan we've missed?

jhadley

@httpzoom said: once we get a good rep people will use our premium service. Sort of like free advertising.

I thought that too. Trust me, almost nobody will.

@httpzoom said: Are we looking at this the wrong way and have a stupid fault in the plan we've missed?

You need to use bigger servers as they're much cheaper to colocate.

Kairus

I think you'd be fine with 4 15k SAS drives. What about looking into 32GB nodes, with SSDs?

tux

@jtodd said: You need to use bigger servers as they're much cheaper to colocate.

Like this?

httpzoom

Well the idea of keeping it small is that its easier to manage problems and a little bit cheaper outlay initially.

From the specs we've planned without overselling we make a very small profit each month on the servers and to me thats free advertising even if no one makes the step up.

I cant help but feel happy about getting techs to work more because right now our premium services run pretty well and they probably sit around playing xbox all day.

Looking at this we aren't looking to make massive profit, so I guess the choice comes from:

Amount of Advertising exposure - Initial outlay/Loss + Staff being paid to actually do something

jhadley

@httpzoom said: very small profit each month

There's the problem ;)

httpzoom

Ah ok, so basically profit isn't the reason to get into this business and normally upselling is an up hill battle?

So basically I'd only be able to use it to punish / keep tech staff busy? :D haha

jhadley

You can make a good profit but you need to use big servers, automate everything and limit support. Key thing is to make sure the low end business itself is profitable - don'y rely on upselling as it generally doesn't happen for low end clients and in fact many will resent you for trying.

httpzoom

Ok, thank you for the advice. I think our first few nodes at least will just be for keeping the tech's busy and we can go from there.

jhadley

No worries, best of luck :)

KuJoe

We run anywhere from 7200-15K SAS without any issues with varied performance across all of them. HDDs by themselves are expensive but we buy complete servers and get the drives extremely cheap (i.e. we pay for the drives at $100 each and get the rest of the hardware free).

Our Vyatta box runs 4 73GB 15k SAS drives in RAID10 because we had nothing else to use them for at the time. LoL.

miTgiB

@KuJoe said: Our Vyatta box

I have a pair of 250gb sata II drives on mine cuz it was what I had laying around known to be good, I was watching it the other day while at the colo, the drives rarely blink, and probably only accesses the drives while writing logs, drives on a router is a waste of space.

KuJoe

@miTgiB said: drives on a router is a waste of space

Yup, we're replacing them with 2 36GB 15k SAS drives in RAID1 so I can use the 73GB drives for testing.

Liam

I'm currently building a server and am in two minds whether to colo or not. Negotiating with a european supplier for 5 x 300GB Seagate SAS 15k (1 Spare). I think to build a decent server it was looking around the $1800-2500 mark.

Damian

@liam said: 5 x 300GB Seagate SAS 15k (1 Spare).

Why 1 hot spare? Why not just have them all in the array?

Liam

@Damian said: Why 1 hot spare? Why not just have them all in the array?

Good point. I would get 8 drives If I could afford it. Still debating whether or not to actually do this..

KuJoe

We use RAID5 with 1 hot spare on our Backup VPS node because at the time hard drives were expensive so this would buy us some time if one drive failed since the controller didn't support RAID6.

gsx

When I first saw the headline I though: Who is using a 15Kb hard drive these days. Sorry, a little old school.

httpzoom

Now 15kb hard drives would be Low-end VPS !

Damian

"yes, we offer core memory in a RAID10 configuration" :D

Francisco

@KuJoe said: Our Vyatta box runs 4 73GB 15k SAS drives in RAID10 because we had nothing else to use them for at the time. LoL.

you like wasting power don't you :P

Vyatta's can run fine on a USB key.

Francisco