[tlug] SATA software RAID or SAS hardware RAID?

["Peter Van der Weeen" <pvanderweeen@example.com>]

Guys,

I need to order a new web/database server and I'd like to get your thoughts on the disk system.
Options are:
(1)   2 x SATA II 250GB disks and set up with software RAID-1 using the onboard SATA channel
or
(2)   SAS5iR controller + 2 x 300GB SAS (10k) disks and set up hardware RAID-1

Option (2) costs about 100.000 yen more than (1) so the overall the price difference is quite significant.
We don't need to go for the latest and the greatest, I simply want something that gives us as much performance as possible at a reasonable cost.

From a price/performance point of view, would it make more sense to go for (1) and perhaps spend an extra 30k on a faster CPU (to make up for the SW RAID) or would it still be better to shell out the extra 100k?

Not sure if it really matters but we'd be running Debian etch on it.

 

Peter