SATA, Fibre Channel and ATA disks on the same array?

BROWSE BY TAG Primary Storage or Storage Hardware,   Disk arrays,   Data storage hardware,   Data storage arrays,   Data Storage Basics,   Disk Storage,   Disk drives,   Fibre Channel drives,   Storage Area Network Upgrades,   High-end storage arrays,   Related information,   SAN (storage area network),   Fibre Channel (FC) SAN,   VIEW ALL TAGS

Digg This!     StumbleUpon     Del.icio.us

RELATED CONTENT Disk arrays IBM unveils new flagship storage system, DS8700 3PAR fattens its thin provisioning arsenal LSI adds solid-state drive, iSCSI support to denser Engenio 7900 disk array Low-cost MLC NAND flash gains in enterprise solid-state storage EMC remakes 8 Gbps FC/10 GbE Clariion provisioning in VMware's image IBM beefs up midrange storage arrays with 8 Gig FC, iSCSI, self-encrypting drives Dell shop switches EqualLogic SAN for 3PAR InServ F-Class disk array to meet performance needs Managing enterprise data storage more efficiently, Part 2: Reclaim storage and consolidate data Best practices for solid-state drive storage technology IBM adds thin provisioning to DS8000, asynchronous mirroring to XIV Storage System Disk arrays Research Data storage arrays Midrange storage array purchase considerations Midrange storage array specifications Clustering for high availability Midrange arrays get a makeover Sharing a LUN between windows and making it a cluster Moving from a modular array to an enterprise array Fibre Channel drives What are SAS, SATA, Fibre Channel and FATA disk drives? When will there be an iSCSI disk drive? 4 Gbit Fibre Channel switch product specifications Fibre Channel HBA hardware specifications Integrating iSCSI and FC storage FC-AL topology in a SAN environment Why go to 4 Gbit Fibre Channel if I'm not already using all of my 1 Gbit or 2 Gbit bandwidth? How does IP storage differ from iSCSI, NAS and Fibre Channel? Hitachi ships SAS and 4 Gbps FC drives Mixing Fibre Channel and SATA drives Fast Guide: Advanced Fibre Channel

RELATED GLOSSARY TERMS Terms from Whatis.com − the technology online dictionary array  (SearchStorage.com) array-based memory  (SearchStorage.com) byte  (SearchStorage.com) column address strobe  (SearchStorage.com) Fast Guide to Storage Technologies  (WhatIs.com) giant magnetoresistive effect  (SearchStorage.com) gigabyte  (SearchStorage.com) hard disk drive  (SearchStorage.com) storage medium  (SearchStorage.com) terabyte  (SearchStorage.com)

RELATED RESOURCES 2020software.com, trial software downloads for accounting software, ERP software, CRM software and business software systems Search Bitpipe.com for the latest white papers and business webcasts Whatis.com, the online computer dictionary

It is possible, but the problem with most implementations that allow this is that there is no way to manage the allocation of the controller resources for the varying performance disk drives. This means that the amount of cache allocated, processor resources or internal ports are managed as if the drives were all of the same type. Usually customers want to implement storage tiers for cost reasons and put less demanding or valuable data on less performing disks. If the disks are mixed and the storage system can't control the internal resource allocation, there may be cases where the performance needed for some data is being sacrificed because of usage of those resources (especially cache) for less demanding data.

Another issue is controlling the placement of the data -- putting it on the SATA or FC drives for example. If that's a manual process (not done with some software automation), the administrative cost of doing that may outweigh the savings from using cheaper drives.