Seagate introduces 2.5" 15k drives

Author: Brett Thomas
Published: 17th January 2007
Comments (18) Stumble
Smaller and faster - the new SAS Savvio series is aimed at the server market, but we bet we could find some uses.

Smaller and faster - the new SAS Savvio series is aimed at the server market, but we bet we could find some uses.

Those of you familiar with server designs know how important a good RAID array can be. However, you also know what a pain it is to fit one in a decent rack setup. The sheer size and heat production of a 3.5" SCSI three-disk array for Raid 5 is one of the many things that make the technology hard to use - well, Seagate has just fixed that.

The company has announced its new Savvio 15k line this week, and it's aiming straight at the heart of the server market (not that a few of us desktop afficionados wouldn't make use of it, too). The Savvio drives are SAS (Serial Attached SCSI) 15k RPM drives designed entirely for RAID setups. They come in only two sizes - 36GB and 73GB. So why do we care? Because they're only 2.5" drives.

The new Savvio drives are designed to fit six drives in that same space as two 3.5" drives, allowing you a host of options all the way up to RAID 6 (or two full sets of RAID 5) where you formerly had only RAID 0 or 1. They will start appearing in the HP ProLiant server line first, and both IBM and Sun are also looking to get them in their lineups.

Of course, the space-saving features and speed of the drives beg the question - could we see these starting to appear in some modders' desktop setups as well? A SCSI RAID card just isn't that expensive anymore....

Would you consider playing around with drives like these? Let us know in our forums.
Quote specofdust 17th January 2007, 17:37
These look quite uttery amazing. If they are as they promise to be they'll basicly be the best HDD's available. But considering they're fairly big for 2.5's, uber-fast, and no doubt heavily optimised and developed, they're going to cost an absolute fortune. Expect disgusting prices that make hardware RAID cards look cheap.
Quote planki 17th January 2007, 17:40
combine this with some form of home/business level NAS and it would be a very good solution for a lot of people's data storage needs i think.
Quote Mister_Tad 17th January 2007, 17:41
Seagate's 10k savvio drives are around 3x £/GB of the 3.5" models, I should expect something similar from the 15k savvio - around £700 for the 73GB model.

Maybe seagate has finally decided that they can't make up their performance deficit with tech and has gone for making it up by quantity. :D
Quote Redbeaver 17th January 2007, 17:57
get SATA2 controller instead of SCSI, ill gladly grab a couple :P
Quote Djpuk 17th January 2007, 18:12
We have been installing these SAS 2.5" into HP servers for a while now and the lack of 15k's for database apps has been quite restrictive so this is welcome news.
They will be expensive I am sure but so were 15k 3.5" not so long ago. Now we always get 15K 3.5" as there is very little if any price difference.
Not too long before we are putting these in dektops for sure.
Quote TomH 17th January 2007, 18:19
Quote:
Originally Posted by Redbeaver
get SATA2 controller instead of SCSI, ill gladly grab a couple :P
I was aware that the SAS and S-ATA connections are similar, and indeed SAS controllers will happily support S-ATA HDDs (albeit in a 'you don't want to do that, dave' fashion). But I wasn't sure about the flip-story; SAS drives working on S-ATA controllers.

Wikipedia's SAS article has the answer:
Quote:
The SFF 8482 connector allows for SATA drives to connect to a SAS backplane, which obviates the need to install an additional SATA controller just to attach a DVD-writer, for example. Conversely, SAS drives are not usable on a SATA bus and have their physical connector keyed to prevent any plugging into a SATA backplane.
:'(

Still, an amazing feat of engineering if it's what you need. :D
Quote Almightyrastus 17th January 2007, 18:45
I have been running a RAID 0 system on 2 ATA133 200Gb drives here for a while and so far I am more than a little impressed by the speed boost, I did it mainly just for something different to try and judging by even these results I will be going the route again albeit with SATA or SCSI which makes these drives look kinda tempting if the price is ok.
Quote Mattt 17th January 2007, 18:46
meh we have had an array full of 15k 2.5" drives at work for the last 2months.

they are very nice but unfortunatly cost a fortune, you can nearly get 2 standard 3.5" arrays for the same price.

also being SAS to take full advantage you need decent array controllers which push the price up further.
Quote samkiller42 17th January 2007, 18:58
Is the price worth it for the performance, i mean putting it againts two SATA WD 74GB raptors in raid, now obviously the raptors are cheaper, but would these new drives actually make a difference?

Sam
Quote mikeuk2004 17th January 2007, 19:01
i like those. Shame they are so small being 73GB. I want bigger :p
Quote DXR_13KE 17th January 2007, 21:41
I am betting that flash technology will mature enough and will get cheaper, and these monster RPM hard drives will soon die.
Quote Mister_Tad 17th January 2007, 21:58
Quote:
Originally Posted by samkiller42
Is the price worth it for the performance, i mean putting it againts two SATA WD 74GB raptors in raid, now obviously the raptors are cheaper, but would these new drives actually make a difference?

Sam

These drives are specifically targeted at enterprise level serving. We're talking hundreds of them in an array. For home uses, raptors would likely be faster, or offer the same speed as these drives just aren't optimised for single-user access patterns. For enterprise use, these (or any other 15k unit for that matter) would run circles around raptors, not to mention offering far better scaleability.
Quote Ramble 17th January 2007, 22:05
Anyone know what kind of hit the seek time on the edge of the disk would take?
Quote Mister_Tad 17th January 2007, 22:09
Seagate gives 2.9ms seek times for the drive, figuring a 2ms average rotational latency, this technically gives you an access time 4.9ms. Manufacturers tend to be a bit optimistic of seek times so I would call it just over 5ms.
Quote ralph.pickering 18th January 2007, 00:05
Quote:
Originally Posted by Mister_Tad
Seagate's 10k savvio drives are around 3x £/GB of the 3.5" models, I should expect something similar from the 15k savvio - around £700 for the 73GB model.

I doubt they'll be quite as high as £700... even data centre managers have budgets. I've just specced up a server with 2.5" SAS drives, although they weren't 15k. The 73Gb drives were only £165 (only...), so I wouldn't expect a £500 premium for a 33% increase in spin speed.
Quote Mister_Tad 18th January 2007, 00:24
£165 is a good price, the cheapest I've seen them at retail for is just over £200 inc VAT.

never the less, you're probably right. £700 is a bit steep. I suppose SAS/SCSI flagships usually retail at closer to £500.

Datacentre managers get better prices though. We just picked up around 1000 146GB 15k units, maybe we got a bulk discount ;)
Quote JazX101 18th January 2007, 11:16
Looks to be interesting, wonder about the noise levels though?? probably not that important in server applications but for those of us with other ideas might be a bit of a sod really.
Jaz_knos
Quote airchie 18th January 2007, 11:52
Quote:
Originally Posted by samkiller42
Is the price worth it for the performance, i mean putting it againts two SATA WD 74GB raptors in raid, now obviously the raptors are cheaper, but would these new drives actually make a difference?

Sam
The main advantage to this is rack space.
Most co-locations charge on a per-U basis so the smaller you can make your server the cheaper your hosting costs.
You can't easily use 6 raptors in a 1U server, certainly not if you want to be able to hot-swap the drives.
6x 2.5" drives on the other hand is no problem.
So although you spend more on the HDDs initially you'll likely save that on the cost of hosting a smaller server. :)
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