@dave247 said in SAS SSD vs SAS HDD in a RAID 10?:

@jaredbusch said in SAS SSD vs SAS HDD in a RAID 10?:

@dave247 said in SAS SSD vs SAS HDD in a RAID 10?:

@scottalanmiller said in SAS SSD vs SAS HDD in a RAID 10?:

@dave247 said in SAS SSD vs SAS HDD in a RAID 10?:

@bradfromxbyte said in SAS SSD vs SAS HDD in a RAID 10?:

It's not a hardware raid. It bypasses the perc completely and goes from the back plane to the proc directly. Any management is done via OS.

oh, well I want redundancy..

1. What does that have to do with the statement above?
2. No, you don't. no one ever "wants" redudancy. That's not a thing anyone should rationally desire. Redundancy is always a tool to achieve a desire, never a desire itself. You should ask yourself what your goal is. We assume you mean reliability, and are using redundancy accidentally as a proxy to mean reliability. But it is REALLY important not to do this, because vendors prey on that mistake left and right and it is amazing how many systems lose data because of that mistake.

oh, so I don't want redundancy? I just want a single 4TB NVMe drive holding all of my data? Ok then -_-

Don't be a dick..

That's my job.

hahaha ... I love you guys. I just get frustrated with stuff when I can't figure out what I'm looking for!!!!!

But we have already figured out what you need - two 4TB read intensive (1DWPD) enterprise SATA SSD in RAID1, which should cost you around $1500 each.

PS. I'd say go with the new Intel D3-S4510.

They always say it was something unimportant and then two years later we will find out that there were a couple of million credit card numbers too in the database.

https://securityledger.com/2018/09/veeam-mishandles-own-data-exposes-440m-customer-e-mails/

@irj said in SANS SEC401: Security Essentials - alternatives?:

@pete-s said in SANS SEC401: Security Essentials - alternatives?:

@irj said in SANS SEC401: Security Essentials - alternatives?:

I am curious to what SANS training costs?

Around $6000 for the training.

So after travel, etc, it is over budget?

Well, since I'm in Europe it's makes sense to take the training here. With flights, travel costs, hotel, etc the total will be about 8250 EUR, which is $9650. Add to that the loss of billable hours and it adds up.

@irj said in SANS SEC401: Security Essentials - alternatives?:

I am curious to what SANS training costs?

Around $6000 for the training.

It's just a couple of those servers that everyone forgot about that runs legacy application and sits in their own isolated network and nobody knows what to do with, except that they have to do something...soon. :smiling_face_with_open_mouth_smiling_eyes:

@phlipelder I don't understand why we keep talking about SAS/SATA SSDs and RAID performance when it's a dead technology, suitable for legacy applications only?

NVMe drives are many hundreds of percent faster, have much higher IOPS, lower latency and the software stack is much more optimized.

All storage on that server is internal so no drive bays. It's far from ideal. And the server doesn't have any hardware raid. Also since some of the ports are SATA-2 they are not suitable for SSDs because they limit the performance to 50% of max. So you are really limited to two SATA SSD drives.

That being said, storing video streams are one of the applications where HDDs are actually very suitable. Depends on how much storage you want but if you need more than a couple of hundred gigs, HDDs should be your choice.

Assuming you want lots of storage I would get two 3.5" drives and run md software raid 1 on those. Something like 2-6TB drives. NAS drives (like WD RED, Seagate Ironwulf) if you are on a low budget, otherwise SATA enterprise drives (Seagate Constellation ES or similar).

I would also get one Supermicro SATA DOM (tiny enterprise SSD that plugs into SATA port) and put the hypervisor and VM's OS on that. Just have a backup in case the DOM ever fails.
https://www.storagereview.com/supermicro_superdom_review

I wouldn't get SSDs for storage for your use case - unless your needs are very small or your budget is big. But if you have a large budget I would get another server with drive bays.

@dave247 said in SAS SSD vs SAS HDD in a RAID 10?:

ok, well if I want to do a RAID 1 then, I've got these as options as they are almost 4TB:

• 3.84TB SSD SAS Read Intensive 12Gbps 512n 2.5in Hot-plug Drive, PX05SR,1 DWPD,7008 TBW - $4,673.84 /ea.
• 3.84TB SSD SAS Read Intensive 12Gb 512e 2.5in Hot-plug Drive, PM1633a,1 DWPD,7008 TBW - $4,391.49 /ea.
• 3.84TB SSD SATA Read Intensive 6Gbps 512n 2.5in Hot-plug Drive, PM863a - $3,262.09 /ea.
• 3.84TB SSD SATA Read Intensive 6Gbps 512e 2.5in Hot-plug Drive, S4500,1 DWPD,7008 TBW - $3,262.09 /ea.

And I could toss out the H740P and go back to the H330

You pay a severe Dell tax on those prices.
PM863a is a Samsung drive and the real price is around $1500.
S4500 is Intel but older slower model as the newer one is S4510. Real price on the newer model is around $1500.

Don't have prices on PX05SR (Toshiba) or PM1633a (Samsung) but similar drive HGST Ultrastar SS300 is around $2800, Seagate 1200.2 is around $2500.

With real price I mean what you pay if you buy one drive from just about anywhere.

I wouldn't waste any money on SAS 12Gbps drives (unless you need dual port) because if you need maximum performance U.2 NVMe is what you want. Don't be fooled by "read intensive" either - 1 DWPD means you can write 3.8TB per day for 5 years.

@scottalanmiller said in SANS SEC401: Security Essentials - alternatives?:

@pete-s said in SANS SEC401: Security Essentials - alternatives?:

Can I learn this on my own using books, videos, websites etc or is a classroom (virtual or actual) a must?

If you dont' need the cert, you can likely learn it far better on your own. Classrooms aren't conducive to learning, typically. The entire concept of classroom learning is focused on testing, rather than learning. Exceptions, of course, but as a general approach.

The part of self study that can be tricky to replicate is hands-on training where you get feedback from the teacher. And also that you can learn from others working together on the same task or problem. But I'm not sure how big that part of the training is.

@dave247 said in SAS SSD vs SAS HDD in a RAID 10?:

@scottalanmiller said in SAS SSD vs SAS HDD in a RAID 10?:

@pete-s said in SAS SSD vs SAS HDD in a RAID 10?:

Remember that every drive you add also increases the risk that one of the disks fails.

Let's assume the annual failure rate for HDDs are 3% on average, as some studies says. With two disks it's 6%, three disks 9%, four disks 12%, 5 disks 15% etc.

It does increase, but not that quickly. With that math, you'd hit 100% with 34 drives. But you never actually get that high, even with 200 drives, you just get close.

And on the inverse, I feel like there's some sort of risk to having only a few really large drives. It's like, maybe too few massive drives are bad and too many tiny drives are bad. Somewhere in that spectrum is a statistical sweet spot, but maybe what I'm currently saying is bs..

Bit failure is related to the size of the drives (number of bits) but annual failure rate doesn't correlate to the size of the drive. Check out backblaze blog for instance on their experience using spinning rust.

@scottalanmiller said in When is colocation the right choice?:

I'm in Europe so doesn't make sense to use US datacenters. But the quotes I have puts three 1U servers at the same price as 1/4 rack.

Wow, the difference here is usually huge. Like $50 - $100 for a 1U or 2U, and several hundred for quarter racks.

Yes, I guess the choice would depend a lot on the pricing.

I also have specific 2U servers in mind which would make it lower cost with a 1/4 rack already at two servers.

Each refurb server will have 128GB RAM on 20 cores, expandable to 256GB RAM on 40 cores. I haven't run benchmarks on it but looking at geekbench, machines with the same cpu have a score of around 3000 for a single core. So performance should be similar to most cloud providers that are not running latest gen servers. Hopefully the balance of physical cores and RAM will turn out fine, 6.4GB/pCPU. Of course I could allocate resources as I want and add another server if need be.

I had a look at SANS SEC401: Security Essentials and it looks interesting and it is something I need but the class is outside my budget at $6K.

This is the curriculum:

• 1 Network Security Essentials
• 2 Defense-In-Depth and Attacks
• 3 Threat Management
• 4 Cryptography, Risk Management and Response
• 5 Windows Security
• 6 Linux Security

I don't need the certification (GSEC) but I'd like to learn the same thing.

Can I learn this on my own using books, videos, websites etc or is a classroom (virtual or actual) a must? Are there any other companies that would offer similar training to SANS SEC401 but for a more reasonable price? Any other options I haven't considered?

PS. Maybe I should have posted this in the "IT career" subforum. It's not a career based question though, just knowledge based.

Remember that every drive you add also increases the risk that one of the disks fails.

Let's assume the annual failure rate for HDDs are 3% on average, as some studies says. With two disks it's 6%, three disks 9%, four disks 12%, 5 disks 15% etc.

So with 5 drives you have 15% risk of a drive failure in year one, 15% in year two etc. So during a five year period (if that is the lifespan on the machine) you'll have 75% risk of a drive failure on a 5 drive array. But with two drives the risk is only 30%.

For SSD some studies shows 1.5% annual failure rate but some manufacturers says they have much lower failure rates. Let's assume 1% for enterprise SSDs. That means five SSDs is 5% risk of drive failure in year one. So it's 25% risk that you have a SSD drive failure in five years on 5 drive array. But only 10% risk on a two drive array.

So more equipment = more failures. So if you can manage with fewer drives I would strive for that.

@scottalanmiller said in When is colocation the right choice?:

@pete-s said in When is colocation the right choice?:

The last few posts goes in the direction I'm planning to go myself. And that is to rent 1/4 rack in a datacenter and colocate a couple of servers there. The servers I'm going to use are part refurbished, part new but still has a couple of years worth of life in them. Given the price of just CPU & memory today, refurbished is very good value for money. You could obviously get more cores and higher density with new machines but even if a few U's are wasted, the difference in money is huge.

In colocation, value tends to lean heavily towards investing in rack density. Virtualization drove the move to colocation heavily. You want big CPUs, and loads of RAM. If you can squeeze into 1U or maybe 2U, it's worth a bit of extra money thrown at the hardware to keep yourself from spilling over to an extra box.

Rack pricing (aka 1/4 rack, 1/3 rack, 1/2 rack, Full Rack) is typically very high compared to "Per U" pricing. You'd be amazed how much you can save.

Hit up @colocationamerica for pricing details. They have some really competitive rates.

I'm in Europe so doesn't make sense to use US datacenters. But the quotes I have puts three 1U servers at the same price as 1/4 rack.

@scottalanmiller said in When is colocation the right choice?:

@pete-s said in When is colocation the right choice?:

Lots of good replies in this thread. The reason I brought it up is because almost no one talks about colocation but maybe that's because of the composition of the members of the forum.

Likely because we've talked about it a lot before and it's well covered for a lot of the regulars. A lot of us use it, NTG does, lots of our clients do, @EddieJennings does, etc. I've had colocation continuously for decades. I'd say it is more the norm, than not.

Thanks, that makes sense.

Lots of good replies in this thread. The reason I brought it up is because almost no one talks about colocation but maybe that's because of the composition of the members of the forum.

The last few posts goes in the direction I'm planning to go myself. And that is to rent 1/4 rack in a datacenter and colocate a couple of servers there. The servers I'm going to use are part refurbished, part new but still has a couple of years worth of life in them. Given the price of just CPU & memory today, refurbished is very good value for money. You could obviously get more cores and higher density with new machines but even if a few U's are wasted, the difference in money is huge.

@dustinb3403 No, Broadcom 3008 has it's own integrated cpu, on board memory etc. It's just not enough performance for it to do all kinds of raid. It's the same controller as Dell H330 and a bunch of others make cards with it as well.

From the specs:

The SAS 3008 offered with the Avago Integrated RAID (IR) feature is a
low cost, high performance RAID solution designed for blade, entry and
mid-range servers that require redundancy and high availability but where
a full featured RAID implementation is cost prohibitive or not desired. The
Avago advanced Integrated RAID options include Integrated Mirroring
(IM), which is RAID 1, Integrated Mirroring Enhanced (IME), known as RAID
1E, Integrated Striping (IS), which is RAID 0, and Integrated Mirroring and
Striping (IMS) which is RAID 10. By simplifying the RAID configuration
options, Integrated RAID is easy to install and configure and meets the
needs of most internal RAID requirements.

Too many post in this thread for me to read but I just wanted to chime in and say that Supermicro for instance have a couple of motherboards in each generation that has a LSI/Broadcom RAID controller on them. It's real hardware raid but low end. I haven't actually used it for hardware raid but it makes a decent HBA for chassis with SAS/SATA drives and port expanders.

For instance this: https://www.supermicro.com/products/motherboard/Xeon/C620/X11SPH-nCTPF.cfm

@scottalanmiller said in SAS SSD vs SAS HDD in a RAID 10?:

@pete-s said in SAS SSD vs SAS HDD in a RAID 10?:

@scottalanmiller said in SAS SSD vs SAS HDD in a RAID 10?:

R1

I like how you abbreviated the abbreviation there and saved two characters of redundant bandwidth!
:thumbs_up: :thumbs_up: :thumbs_up:

I took the time to document RAID notation years ago

:grinning_face_with_smiling_eyes: I think you made that up all by yourself :winking_face: