I am looking to outfit my new server (new to me) with larger capacity disks. The server right now has 4 SAS 146GB disks in it. My original thought was to just buy larger SAS disks and replace or add more disks to the existing configuration. The issue I have ran into is the drives tend to get a little pricey. So I started thinking.
Do I even need SAS disks? What type or workloads need that kind of bandwidth (bus bandwidth)?
My goal is to setup a single server with either Linux or FreeBSD running ZFS and use the ZFS pool as storage for a Xen instance running on the same machine. Basically a small virtualization setup for non-production and non-critical usage.
Is there any reason why I need to use SAS drives? Is there more to it than just RPM and bandwidth?
I would still be using "enterprise" SATA drive from [insert server manufacturer here] so I am under the impression reliability would not be a factor in my choice, right?