SCSI Toolbox :: Newsletter - November 2003

IN THIS EDITION

October Survey Winner - And another chance to Win
Ask Dr. SCSI - What's the deal with transfer rates?
New DMS (Disk Manufacturing/Screening) Features in version 4.2
Corporate Licensing options for STB Products



October Survey Winner - And another chance to Win
The winner of the October Survey and proud owner of the USB/Pen is Ian Clancy from Seagate. Thank you everyone who participated, we appreciate your valuable feedback and recommendations. You'll all be excited to see the new features in the 4.2 November release scheduled for release at the end of the month, and the 5.0 release coming in Q1 of 2004!

For another chance to win please take our November Survey to win one of these very cool keychain "spy" digital cameras!











Ask Dr. SCSI - I need to test how my system responds to both correctable and uncorrectable disk errors - how can I do this?

The real Dr. SCSI Q. How can I tell what the maximum I/O throughput through my system should
be?

A. A. The maximum I/O throughput your will see through your test system will be dependant on a number of things -
1) How fast is your PCI bus
2) How fast is your SCSI or FC connection, and
3) How fast are your SCSI peripherals.

For instance, if you are running a 1Gb Fibre Channel HBA plugged into a 32 bit PCI slot, the maximum transfer rate of the HBA and the PCI bus are going to limit your highest possible transfer rate to about 80 MB/sec. We'll call this your "data pipe". If you have a disk drive that can sustain a 45MB/sec transfer rate, it will be able to run full speed in this setup. If you have two of these drives, they should both be able to run full speed as well. But when you add a third drive, suddenly you have disk drives that could use 135 MB/sec of bandwidth, but they're attached to a "data pipe" that can handle no more than 80. So what will happen is the drives will each transfer data as fast as they can (45 MB/s) through a slower data pipe that will cause them to each transfer data a little less often. If your drives all have approximately the same individual transfer rate you can calculate what each drive will be able to accomplish through it's data pipe - just divide the data pipe throughput (80 MB/s in this case) by the number of drives attached. If you have 7 drives, each drive is going to be able to transfer at about 11MB/s. To sustain higher throughputs consider using a computer with a 64 bit PCI bus, with multiple fast (2Gb FC, U320) host bus adapters.











New DMS (Disk Manufacturing/Screening) Features in version 4.2
Just a reminder of the new things to come in the 4.2 release of the Disk Manufacturing/Screening Module that is included with your SCSItoolbox purchase.

4.2 DMS(Disk Manufacturing/Screening) key new features
· seek tests
· stop/start tests
· quick reports - a text report for each drive tested
· unit attention from bus resets are skipped
· new detailed test description view
· beeps - to signal test sequence finished

Don't forget these features, and other new tests will be available in the November so if you're not currently an active Performa customer sign up today! http://www.scsitoolbox.com/performa.asp











Corporate Licensing for STB Products
Could your company use more than a combined 25 licenses of the SCSItoolbox and/or Developer Toolbox? Are you tired of using the hardware keys that are required for the Toolbox Products? You might want to take a closer look at our Corporate licensing options that include features like:

  • Unlimited Corporate usage of SCSI Toolbox Products
  • Special OEM build of STB products eliminates hardware keys
  • Surprisingly affordable pricing structure
  • Onsite Training

Contact Sales to find out if a Corporate Site License for SCSI Toolbox Products is right for you.

SCSI Toolbox, LLC - PO Box 620520 - Littleton, CO 80162-0520
Sales: 720.249.2641
General: 303.948.5376
www.scsitoolbox.com
Click here for a free demo (v4.1)