Technology considerations in selecting a direct attached storage solution for HP ProLiant Gen8 servers

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Table 2: Characteristics of HP hard disk drives for servers
Entry drives* Midline drives Enterprise drives
General
description
Lowest unit cost High capacity
Lowest cost per gigabyte
High reliability
High performance
Use
environments
Boot drive
Non-critical storage
External storage
Backups/archival
Redundancy
Mission critical
High I/O
Workload < 40% < 40% Unconstrained workloads
Reliability 2 X Entry drive reliability 3.5 X Entry drive reliability
Interface SATA 3 Gb/s SATA 3 Gb/s and 6 Gb/s
SAS 6 Gb/s
SAS 6 Gb/s
Connectivity Single port Single port SATA
Dual port SAS
Dual port
RPM 7,200 7,200 10K and 15K
Warranty 1 year 1 year 3 years
*For comparison only. Entry drives are not currently available as options for ProLiant Gen8 servers.
HP drives for servers are available in both 2.5-inch (small) and 3.5-inch (large) form factors. SFF
drives can require as little as half the power and generate significantly less heat than LFF drives. SFF
drives are now the primary storage form factor because of their increased data densities, better
reliability, lower power requirements, and smaller size. Our new Enterprise class drives and all new
10K and 15K RPM drives are SFF, and SFF drives are standard in our Gen8 servers. To use LFF drives
in Gen8 servers, you must order specific server configurations.
The industry is transitioning away from LFF enterprise drives, though they are the better choice when
you need large capacities and lowest cost per gigabyte. We expect to continue developing LFF
Midline class drives.
Solid state storage technology
Solid state storage delivers higher performance, lower latency, and lower power consumption than
traditional rotating media. Not all solid state storage is the same, so the HP portfolio includes three
classes of solid state drives: Enterprise Performance SSD, Enterprise Mainstream SSD, and Enterprise
Value SSD. These device classes meet the requirements of different applications based on capacity,
performance, cost, and endurance (Table 3).