Seagate has refreshed its Savvio series of 2.5” SAS drives, taking the spindle speed from 10,000 RPM up to 15,000. Drives of this speed have been around for some time, but never in this form factor, making this a world first for Seagate.
The Savvio series use Serially Attached SCSI (SAS), and utilise perpendicular magnetic recording (PMR). They also support multipath IPO -- meaning the drive can be connected to two independent controller cards -- and will be identified by two independent SAS addresses when it is used in this configuration.
Two versions are available: a 36.7GB version which contains a single platter, and a 73.4GB version which contains two platters. We received two 73.4GB Savvios and tested them both with an HP xw8400 workstation equipped with an onboard LSI logic SAS controller.
We measured the performance of the two drives and the RAID 0 array with HD Tach’s long benchmark setting, which uses 32MB zones. When tested individually, one drive performed slightly faster than the other, so we have included results for the averaged performance of the drives as well as their individual results.
|
MB/s |
MB/s Burst |
Response time (ms) |
| Drive 1 |
97.5 |
195.8 |
5.6 |
| Drive 2 |
95.8 |
196.6 |
5.5 |
| Averaged Drive performance |
96.6 |
196.2 |
5.6 |
| Two drives in RAID 0 |
188.6 |
334.9 |
5.5 |
If your server room has space constrictions but you still need the best possible drive performance out of it, the Savvio range now offers the optimum solution. It’s difficult to assess long term reliability without the benefit of hindsight, however we know that the Savvio was developed from Seagate’s SCSI-based Cheetah line, not the consumer grade Momentus line used in laptops, so it’s highly unlikely that they will be anything but stable once deployed.
Its SCSI heritage combined with benefits stemming from its size -- such as reduced wear, power requirements and heat output -- should make it a favourite in the server room. The drives have been shipped to OEMs, but Seagate has not finalised pricing yet. Let the people in accounts cross that bridge when they come to it.