Note the use of the word "subsystem" in the phrase "disk subsystem". Disk drives are pretty much a commodity item. They come in different sizes and somewhat different speeds, but given like for like, e.g., Ultra-SCSI 10,000 RPM, the differences in average access time, head positioning time, etc. are not typically where the difference in overall subsystem performance comes from. Controllers -- how intelligent, what features, etc., how the controllers connect to the rest of the system, bus speeds, DMA performance, how much the main processor has to mediate, the quality of the drivers, etc., etc. Everything in that except the actual disk itself is a Sun product. A lot of it might not be Sparc, i.e., not the main processor itself, but it is all Sun.
Oh, and mentioning RAID, one hopes you don't mean RAID 5. 0 and 1 can be beneficial for database performance, but RAID 5 is a killer if one is actually writing to the database and caring about the data. There are people, like EMC, that make RAID 5 controllers which actually work and deliver acceptable performance, but I have trouble understanding why anyone uses them, at least for high transaction database applications, since the same amount of money spent on RAID 0 and 1 will give you better performance and equal security.
I assure you that my legs are quite real! |
