SAS vs SATA Exos 12TB

[brettyj]

Hey,

Thinking about buying some Exos 12TB because they seem to be similar price to the IronWolfs.

The SATA is £308 and the SAS is £322 - with the prices so close, I've been debating if I should go with the SAS.

I'm using a R510, which I believe is limited to 6GBps, and I have other SATA drives in the dataplane (mixing and matching interfaces isn't a problem is it?)

Should I go SAS for the sake of £14 more? Will I cause myself problems in the future? Do all drives in a pool have to have the same interface?

Thanks!

 

[brettyj]

Just to add they are Exos x14

 

[Samuel Tai]

You can mix SAS and SATA drives in a pool. The question is, do you have an HBA to communicate with the SAS drives?

 

[brettyj]

Hey,

Yeah I'm using a H200 in IT Mode with a backplane that supports SAS and SATA

 

[Samuel Tai]

Unless there's a feature on SAS drives you absolutely need (e.g., SED support), I don't really see a benefit to going with a SAS drive.

 

[cobrakiller58]

I was also looking at the Exos X14 here the price per TB for enterprise drives is the lowest on them. I was looking at the SATA version because they have more verbose smart reporting and if there is a catastrophic failure I can slap them in almost any machine the get immediate access to the data.

 

[sretalla]

As a general rule, drive manufacturers have put their most reliable drives together with SAS controllers for consumption in enterprise systems.

For the last few years, there has been a trend toward SATA use in enterprise systems (mainly due to price and the advancement of redundant storage solutions that are easy to administer).

From the historical perspective and benefiting from those who remember times gone by, the drive manufacturers are still charging more for SAS, perhaps without real cause at this point.

TL/DR: It's probably fine to go with SATA if they are cheaper, but if you want 100% confidence, SAS is still probably worth a thought.

 

[brettyj]

Thanks for the responses. Going with SATA - if there's not much difference going with the SAS version then may as well go for the more compatible interface, in case I need to re-appropriate it in the future - plus SMART stats are important, and I had heard they aren't quite as good with SAS. I won't get the full benefit of the speed because it's a HDD, and my controller only supports up to 6GBps anyway.