Hdd Performance Comparisons; Performance Comparison Between Sata And Sas Drives - HP 418371-B21 - Dual Port 72 GB Hard Drive Technology Brief

HDD performance comparisons

This section provides performance results of comparisons between HDD interface types, form factors,
and platter speeds. Other factors such as operating system, application environment, controller type,
RAID strategy, and general workload also play a part in system performance and should be
considered when evaluating systems.

Performance comparison between SATA and SAS drives

Systems that support SAS can be configured with a mix of SAS and SATA drives
performance goals are more easily achieved using SAS drives. Figures 1 through 3 are plots of
performance data from tests of SATA drives (non-NCQ and NCQ) and SAS drives using the following
configuration:
• System: HP StorageWorks 60 Modular Smart Array
• SAS Controller: HP Smart Array P400, firmware version 4.12, 512 MB cache, RAID 1
Figure 1. Relative performance: sequential operations of non-NCQ SATA, NCQ SATA, and SAS
2-drive array with HP Smart Array P400 Controller, RAID 1
1000%
900%
800%
700%
600%
500%
400%
300%
200%
100%
0%
4KB SEQ READ
4 Mixing SATA and SAS drives within a logical drive is NOT allowed.
Sequential Operations, RAID 1 (128 KB)
64KB SEQ READ 512KB SEQ READ
SATA, Non-NCQ 60-GB, 5.4K, 25/75 R/W cache (baseline performance level)
SATA, NCQ 120-GB, 5.4K, 25/75 R/W cache
SAS, 72-GB, 15K, 25/75 R/W cache
1MB SEQ READ 4KB SEQ WRITE
, although
4
IOMETER 07.30.2004
64KB SEQ WRITE 512KB SEQ WRITE
5