I'm just trying to evaluate HBase/Hadoop on a small cluster. For the very first tests I just set up a cluster of 6 nodes on a single ESXi server, 1x Master/ZK/NN and 5x RS/DN. The setup process was quiet easy and straight forward with CDH3b3 on CentOS 5.5. Now I'm able to play around with the basic operation. But for real performance tests I'll have to add fast disks and go for real hardware.
>From the list I learned, to increase the disk throughput just use more disks/spindles. For this case I'd like to go for real nodes with 4x 1TB disks per node. I think 2TB disks are slower, and I really don't need 8TB per node for my POC. For now I just would select standard 7200 SATA disks like WD1003FBYX, WD1002FAEX or similar. But what type of 1TB disk gives me a good performance for a reasonable price? I can't find any recent comparison for the usage pattern with hbase/hadoop. Any recommendations are welcome. Thanks. -- Dieter
