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From: tom@microlite.com (D. Thomas Podnar)
Subject: Re: SATA on 5.0.6 or 5.0.7?
Date: 12 Sep 2005 14:58:36 -0400
Message-ID: <200509121858.OAA10345@mlite.microlite.com> 

: "Steve M. Fabac, Jr." <smfabac@att.net> wrote in message 
: news:4325B488.908204F5@att.net...
: > Anyone running SCO 5.0.6 or 5.0.7 on servers with
: > SATA drives?
: >
: > I'd like to hear from anyone with SATA based servers and if
: > they met their exceptions for performance and reliability.
: >
: > In the past, I have always used SCSI drives for the performance
: > and customary 5 year warrantee.  Now SATA drives are available with
: > 5 year warrantee and manufactures claim the drives are equivalent
: > to SCSI performance at 40% less cost.
: >
: > I have checked my distributors and all the SATA drives I can find
: > are 7200 RPM with the exception of the 36G WD360GD 10k RPM SATA
: > drive.
: >
: > I have a request from a client running SCO 3.2v4.2 on 66 MHz 486
: > with 4G disk to upgrade to current hardware and OS.
: >
: > SCSI is overkill for this client and the 36G WD looks like a
: > good choice. I'll eliminate all SCSI by using Backup Edge
: > writing to a ATAPI DVD-RAM and upgrade the client to
: > 5.0.6 or 5.0.7 (SCO's web site suggests it has upgrades to
: > Enterprise 6.0 from Xenix/UNIX but there is no part number
: > listed and inquiries come up: Not Available).
: >
: >
: > --
: >
: >                                      Steve Fabac
: >                                       S.M. Fabac & Associates
: >                                        816/765-1670 

Without the expense of a SATA RAID controller and driver software,
SATA drives under 5.0.6 and 5.0.7 just run in IDE emulation mode.

Here's some good news. (No, I didn't change car insurance.)


There is an Intel-driven specification for the Advanced Host Controller
Interface (AHCI), which is available for relatively recent motherboards.

This specification includes support for SATA 1.5 and SATA II with
very high speeds and native command queuing (NCQ). NCQ improves performance
and is available on many newer SATA hard drives.

SCO OpenServer 6.0.0 has native support for AHCI, with a recently updated
AHCI 1.1 driver now available.

The AHCI driver natively supports these SATA devices at very high
transfer rates...
 - Hard drives
 - DVD drives
 - Iomega REV drives
 - Tape drives (requires 1.1 driver)

The OpenServer 6 filesystem is much faster than 5.0.x. A low end AHCI/NCQ
solution will probably significantly outperform a similarly configured
non-RAID SCSI 5.0.x system.

Note: You can't actually purchase a SATA tape drive yet, but we
know they work ;-)

Those attending the BackupEDGE training and certification classes in
New England in two weeks will see an OpenServer 6 system with ALL
of the devices mentioned above.



Tom
---
 D. Thomas Podnar
 tom@microlite.com         http://www.microlite.com
 Microlite Corporation     724-375-6711 Voice
 2315 Mill Street          724-375-6908 Fax
 Aliquippa PA 15001-2228   888-257-3343 Toll Free Sales
-------------------------------------------------------
Developers of Microlite BackupEDGE
 

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