7200 rpm sata drives for VMDKs on SAN?

[arthurvino1]

Will the performance be compromized in using 7200 rpm 750GB drives on EMC FC SAN for VMDKs?

We need lots of storage and sata is the only option for reasonably priced large drives?

Thanks in advance for any input.

[philvirt]

In the past there have been many comparisons and most have found that 7200 is fine. I've seen it on both and couldn't really tell the difference myself.

Here is any example in another thread comparing 7200 on another brand...

http://communities.vmware.com/thread/103270

Regards,

Fil

[Dave_Mishchenko]

In part it will depend on the work load you intend to run - also how many drives to you plan to use? If you plan do use this for database type VMs and will have lots of users, then you might consider not using SATA drives, but if the total IO load is low and you just need lots of space then SATA may be fine. What do you have planned for the storage?

[arthurvino1]

Dave, We have a few Databased running on VMs, but they are not monsters.

[BenConrad]

SATA is fine for VM's, it's fine for databases as well. However, you will find that you hit the wall (latency jumps upward) with SATA disks sooner than you would with 10/15K disks. SATA will start to suffer as multiple random IO loads hit the disks all a the same time. Experienced storage vendors will buffer some of those issues via intelligent controllers, algorithms and cache but after a certain point if you have too many IOPS at a given IO size SATA gets slow fast.

On the flip side, SATA gets you huge storage capabilities at a reasonable cost.

Ben