One StorageTek 6140 vs Two (2) 2540 's?


 
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Operating Systems Solaris One StorageTek 6140 vs Two (2) 2540 's?
# 1  
Old 05-19-2008
One StorageTek 6140 vs Two (2) 2540 's?

We're moving our production 3510FC to development, so we need to replace the production 3510FC. The 6140 is nice, but pricey.

Here's the question: Would two 2540's (RAID 10) be 'faster' than one 3510? (RAID 10) and faster than one 6140 (RAID 10)?

One StoregeTek 6140 (16x72GB 15k rpm fc-al RAID 10) vs. Two StoregeTek 2540 's (24x72GB 15k rpm SAS RAID 10)

While the 2540 uses SAS drives vs the 6140 FC-AL drives, the specs on the drives are nearly identical as far as average latency etc as listed on seagate.com (SAS = ST373455SS ) (FC-AL = ST373455FC )

Oh yeah, we're an Oracle shop, so my assumption is that, with drives & HBA being equal, the more spindles the better.
# 2  
Old 05-20-2008
Hey,

the 2540 will be faster than the 3510 and the 6140 is faster than the 2540.
Why?
The 2540 has SAS-Drives or SATA-Drives with 3 GB/s, only the host-connection
is 4 GB/s. The 6140 has FC-Disks with 4 GB/s. So on the 6140 you will be able
the full 4 GB transport to the disks. And the Cache-Controller of the 6140 is greater.
Here some trends from the test center of SUN/LSI:
2540 / ca. 100 KIOPs, ca. 600 MB/s
6140 / ca. 200 KIOPs, ca. 1000 MB/s

CU
lowbyte
# 3  
Old 05-20-2008
Thanks for the information lowbyte Smilie

Is it safe to assume then that two 2540's would perform 200 KIOPs, ca. 1200 MB/s ? I'm trying to compare the performance of two 2540's vs one 6140.

Two fully populated 2540's (24x73 15Krpm) is going to cost roughly $15k, while one fully populated 6140 price is around $27k.

Thanks again.

-bv
# 4  
Old 05-20-2008
are you running single or dual path? that makes a difference too Smilie
# 5  
Old 05-20-2008
aha. Thanks for the detailed question.
Dual path for the two 2540's via two HBA's Smilie (SG-XPCIE2FC-QF4)
Single path for the one 6140 via one HBA Smilie (SG-XPCIE2FC-QF4)

btw, I haven't had much luck asking these questions to several sun var's and sales engineers Smilie Smilie Smilie

If anyone has the best bang/buck config. please share.

Thanks again.
-bv
# 6  
Old 05-20-2008
how can 2 slower boxes be faster as one faster box? are they linked to one box? or what is your plan to setup the two arrays to one or more volumes? what kind of volumemanager do you plan to use and what app is running?
# 7  
Old 05-21-2008
Quote:
Originally Posted by DukeNuke2
how can 2 slower boxes be faster as one faster box? are they linked to one box? or what is your plan to setup the two arrays to one or more volumes? what kind of volumemanager do you plan to use and what app is running?
They can easily be, and I work with an application in which 2 2540s are ~ 1.5 times faster than a single 6140, but as you indicated the volume manager and volume layout are key. If using ZFS it is possible to become spindle bound, rather than cache or bus bound, so the extra 8 spindles the 2 2540s give are an advantage.

What I would recommend is that you ask Sun for both from their loaner pool and do some benchmarking with your application on both an choose whichever is better for you.
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