LESS ERROR : load error: failed to find /home4/kacole2/public_html/templates/tx_zenith/less/typography.lessLESS ERROR : load error: failed to find /home4/kacole2/public_html/templates/tx_zenith/less/template.lessLESS ERROR : load error: failed to find /home4/kacole2/public_html/templates/tx_zenith/less/responsive.lessLESS ERROR : load error: failed to find /home4/kacole2/public_html/templates/tx_zenith/less/k2.less

Follow Me Icons

 

Follow @KendrickColeman on TwitterConnect on LinkedInWatch My Videos on YouTubeFollow me on FacebookCheck Out My Projects on GitHubStay Up To Date with RSS

Search

BSA 728x90 Center Banner

Western Digital Red for vSphere Home Lab & NAS

EDIT **2/17/13**

These lines of drives do terrible at I/O performance. Instead, they are better suited for application or media streaming

Benchmark Results: Streaming Reads/Writes, 4 KB Random Reads/Writes

 

I ran into this little gem after seeing a SlickDeal. I had never heard of it before, but Western Digital has come out with a new line of desktop 3.5" form drives called their "Red" line. This Red line is unlike their Black, Blue and Green. Western Digial has been seeing an uptick of people using 3.5" drives in NAS appications for home use. It's grea to see Western Digital come out with a new line of drives because I believe these are perfect for vSphere Home Lab use. I always preferred the Black line of drives because unlike the Green and Blue, there is no power saving functionality. The Green and Blue line of drives can end up corrupting data because if the drives aren't in use, then they can be put to sleep by the built-in firmware.

 

 

The Red line of drives is different because it's specifically made for NAS devices. It has NAS aware firmware built in so it can natively function better when put into a RAID like enterprise drives. In addition, while even being in RAID, there is some power saving functionality that will keep your data intact. The kicker? The price is only slightly above the standard cost of the normal Black.

 

If you're planning on building out a vSphere Home Lab, I would give this product a shot. I wish these were out a few years ago when I bought mine. Maybe this is an excuse to start upgrading.

 

Here is a link to the 2TB drives: Western Digital Red WD20EFRX 2TB IntelliPower 64MB Cache SATA 6.0Gb/s 3.5" Internal Hard Drive -Bare Drive

 

This is a NewEgg interview with one of the WD engineers behind the new line of drives

 

Here is a techtalk interview that asks "Are Green drives killing your NAS?"

 

Edit--------/---------

some more information has been brought to light. Thanks to some reviews from Toma Hardware, it seems as if the Red drives aren't suitable for High I/O environment where there are a lot of random reads aand writes. Looks like this sort of thing is best used as streaming media at home or for other applications. If you have Red drives at home let me know how they perform in your vSphsre environment

Benchmark Results: Streaming Reads/Writes, 4 KB Random Reads/Writes

 

"Once again, Western Digital's Red drives demonstrate slow I/O performance. Just like in Iometer’s database, file server, Web server, and workstation benchmarks, the two drives can’t hold their own against the competition."

 

Related Items

Related Tags

LESS ERROR : load error: failed to find /home4/kacole2/public_html/templates/tx_zenith/less/styles/blue.lessLESS ERROR : load error: failed to find /home4/kacole2/public_html/templates/tx_zenith/less/styles/green.lessLESS ERROR : load error: failed to find /home4/kacole2/public_html/templates/tx_zenith/less/styles/orange.lessLESS ERROR : load error: failed to find /home4/kacole2/public_html/templates/tx_zenith/less/styles/purple.less