HP 418371-B21 - Dual Port 72 GB Hard Drive, Technology Brief, Page: 8 / 14

Performance comparisons between SAS drives
This section includes comparisons of SAS drives based on form factor and platter speed, along with
differences in RAID strategies.
Performance comparisons based on form factor
Figures 4 through 8 compare the performance of SFF SAS drives and LFF SAS drives. The following
configuration was used for testing the SAS drives:
•
System: HP StorageWorks 70 Modular Smart Array
•
SAS Controller: HP Smart Array P800, firmware version 4.06, 512 MB cache
Figure 4. Performance comparison: SFF to LFF 15K 72-GB SAS drives with HP Smart Array P800
Controller, RAID 0 (128K)
RAID-0 (128KB)
70%
80%
90%
100%
110%
120%
130%
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4KB RANDOM READ 4KB RANDOM WRITE 4KB OLTP 8KB RANDOM READ 8KB RANDOM WRITE 8KB OLTP 64KB RANDOM READ 64KB RANDOM WRITE
%
Dif
f -
SFF
15
K
Perf
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F 15K
IOMETER 07.30.2004
4 SFF SAS drives
6 SFF SAS drives
8 SFF SAS drives
12 SFF SAS drives
Level of performance for LFF SAS drives
As indicated in Figure 4, SFF SAS drive arrays yield better performance in a RAID 0 solution than LFF
SAS drive arrays. While providing maximum storage capacity and performance, RAID 0 does not
provide any disk redundancy.
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