Ra81's vs. Fujitsu Eagles (and other stuff)

[jazzy%aerospace at sri-unix.UUCP]

From:  Richard Fitzgerald <jazzy at aerospace>

   Well, we finally made our decision, and in about 30-60 days (should be 30)
we expect delivery of a 5th 780, *AND* 14 Fujitsu Eagle disk drives from S.I.
These drives will include 10 of them mounted on the new SIMACS s.i. cluster
controller/software.  We based this decision on a very important thing, we 
had SI and DEC deliver 2 drives and 2 controllers (one each for a 780 and 750)
in order fo us to benchmark the disk on our own specific software loads.
I am still going through alot of the data to figure out just how I should 
present it over the net (if at all) so as not to burden everyone with extra
mail.  Anyway the overall tests showed the Eagles to be much faster and another
important fact, MORE RELIABLE!  The ra81s actually crashed once in the test
but of course was fixed quickly (about 2 hours for them to deliver a part)
Also, it seems DEC does not really want us to buy the hsc50/ci hardware as
they are still a little unsure of selling to us and making us unhappy if 
anything goes wrong (see footnote at end of this for explanation)  One nice
thing though, is that the RA81 which was ordered with the new 780 is being
swapped out one for one for a 9900/51 (si's 9900 controller and eagle drive)
which will allow us to have 1 Eagle on each system as a system disk.  The 
SIMACS is dual channelled (and dual controllered with 2 9920's) for extra
speed and redundancy.  The only problem I see with this, is that each 9920
can only handle 8 drives, but you can daisy chain the 9920's off each other
so I guess that is not a problem.  
   Well, to cut this short, I will be posting actual numbers/results of
benchmarks shortly, and all those who wish more specific information, please
send me mail.  Bye for now...

-Rich Fitzgerald (jazzy at aerospace)

Footnote:
   United Technologies (where I now work) is a major corporate account of DEC's
   and they are somewhat leary of selling us anythign which has not been out
   running for several months at different sites.  Therefore they have told us
   that it is a better business decision to go with SI.  Also, in the SI
   contract, we have a clause stating "...if at any future release of VMS from 
   DEC the SI-SIMACS fails to operate as stated, we (SI) will replace it with
   complete DEC equipment to bring systems up to same level of operation..."

nuff said...