This article will be cover majorly the four main types of hard drives used for the servers. These types of hard disk differ from each other in the way of performance, response time and many more factors. The server hard disk must meet these below-mentioned requirements:
- Reliability- unrecoverable data loss can result in a severe loss to company and individuals
- Response time- the processing speed of disk should be fast such that user don’t have to wait for the response
- Performance- servers are designed to handle multiple requests simultaneously
There is specific configuration limitation on these drives, and the specifics should be checked for the type of RAID controller used in configuring these drives. Also, the types of HDD cannot be mixed in the same RAID set. So the drives should be chosen wisely for configuring it into the server. Let us learn more about them in brief
Serial ATA(SATA): SATA drives are base hard drives for all the entry-level servers. Originally, Serial ATA was designed to replace the older parallel ATA (PATA), offering several advantages like reduced cable size, cost, faster data transfer and many more. They have standard read and write speed of 5400 and 7200 RPM. HDD with SATA is usually used for
- Workflow operations
- Data storage
- Backup system
Near Line SAS– Near line SAS are enterprise SATA drives with SAS interface, head, media and the rotational speed of traditional enterprise-class SATA drives. These drives provide better reliability and performance over SATA drives. Basically, these drives are a hybrid between SATA and SAS.
Serial Attached SCSI (SAS): SAS is a communication protocol used in enterprise hard drives and tape drives. SAS has a read and write speed of 1500 RPM. These drives are the top end in performance for electromechanical drives. These drives are suitable for high speed simultaneously rewriting cycles also. These drives are ideal for:
- Database management system
- Systems handling numerous queries
- High Load Servers
Solid State Drives (SSD)– Solid State Drive (SSD) is a data storage device that uses integrated circuit assemblies as memory to store data. SSDs employs mechanical components making them superior to the traditional Hard Disks. Compared with other disks these drives are less susceptible to shocks and are silent and very fast. They also have lower access time and latency. These drives are ideal for High-load projects, CMS and many more that require both speed and storage advantages.
The choice of a drive depends on a particular website/application which you will be deploying on the server and what advantage you want from these types of drives.
