SATA Arrays are Cheap-ish - Storage Technology Magazine
Just because SATA drives cost less than a quarter the cost of Fibre Channel drives on a $/GB basis, don't expect those kinds of savings in the new SATA-based arrays from EMC, Hewlett-Packard, Hitachi Data Systems and Sun. There, the savings shrink to approximately 50%.

According to Chris Wood, director of technical sales and marketing with Sun's networked storage division, the price range for these arrays--$3/GB to $12/GB--is consistent across all the major vendors. That makes sense, Wood says, since "we all buy our drives from the same manufacturers."

The latest SATA arrays include:

  • EMC's Clariion AX100, which as resold by Dell, costs between $10.41/GB for a single controller model with 480GB, to $3.12/GB for a dual controller model with twelve 250GB drives.
  • IBM's TotalStorage FAStT100 has a list price of $9.06/GB for a 3.5TB unit. The FAStT100 can support up to four 3.5TB EXP100 disk shelves.
  • Sun's StorEdge 3511, a 12-drive model that can take an additional eight 3TB expansion trays. The unit also comes standard with eight host ports.
  • HP's MSA1500 controller, plus the MSA20 SATA JBOD. A dual controller pair, plus 2TB of SATA storage, costs about $7.50/GB.
  • HDS' SATA Intermix Option for its Thunder 9500V family. Depending on the configuration, HDS expects SATA drives to cost approximately 40% that of Fibre Channel drives.
Assuming cost is about equal, storage buyers need

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to consider other buying criteria such as software support or expandability, says Sun's Wood.

Of course, SATA's Achilles' heel is its reliability, which may pave the way for Seagate's new NL35 drive, also a desktop class drive, but with a dual-ported Fibre Channel interface. Dubbed Fibre-Attached Technology Adapted (FATA), Xiotech and HP will offer FATA drives on their respective Magnitude and EVA arrays shortly.

Why not SATA? Midrange customers "don't want to compromise on reliability," says Kyle Fitze, director of marketing for HP's online storage division. They are, however, "willing to compromise on performance."

This was first published in July 2004