SCSI IDE - Server

[DrGreen]

I'm making what I hope to be a logical upgrade to several of a small organization's server's. I'll primarily be upgrading IDE100 hard drives to SCSI 320. i was planning on using http://www.adaptec.com/worldwide/product/proddetail.html?sess=no&language=English+US&prodke y=ASC-29320ALP-R&cat=%2fTechnology%2fSCSI%2fNew+Ultra320+SCSI! as the adapter and 2 http://www.directron.com/146z1014680.html mirrored unless I get some good opposing feedback here. There's is obviously a huge price difference.
First, with a 100 client 10/100 network, am I really gonna see a difference in performance & stablity all around?
What are some utilities I can use to quantify the differance?
Will the difference be seen more on a file server over a application/service server. I've had to sell the GM on going SCSI, what are some bullets I can hit him with to make him feel the investment are well justified if it is?

[Chairman_Kaga]

Are these file servers or app servers or both?

SCSI definitely has higher read/write speeds. Depending on how your apps are written, that could make a huge difference. Lets take a database app for example.

If DB is on the server and app is on the server... when a querry is run, it likely creates a report or cached file local on the app server before displaying back to the end users PC. Mirrored drives will also speed up reads. Striped drives will help speed up writes.

For file servers, with multiple people accessing files, a high RPM SCSI drive with decent cache is great.

Now, for system disks, it's also much faster on SCSI. We don't have a single IDE drive in our data center.

[AnalogKid]

It is tough to give an opinion unless we know what the servers are going to be used for, and what the uptime is expected of the servers.

For file & print, unless you need capabilities like hotswap, I would say, IDE should be sufficient. I noticed that Adaptec makes a SATA raid controller for $75 vs. $350 for the SCSI. I'm sure SATA hard drives are a lot cheaper than SCSI.

App servers might be a different story though.

[DrGreen]

2 of the servers are file servers to which data is aquired from chemstations to mapped volumes on the servers.
They are both up for 24/7 aquiring data simultaneously from multiple clients.
Two other entirely different boxes i was considering upgrading are the VPN server and the proxy/AV master server. I was thinking about going from their current IDE 66 to SATA but if the "old man" will spring for SCSi across the board....
Is it worth while to do technically?
My LIMS server is already on scsi 320 and is really the only server with scsi320 & application server. It is a SQL 7.0 that also fires server side subroutines for a Laboratory Information Management System. (Labworks). When I use that server I can feel a difference in performance over the same P4t533 hardware but with IDE or SATA drives, but I wasn't sure it cascaded across the network for the clients. The performace increase that is. Is a 10k SCSI drive less likely to fail than a 7200 IDE ot SATA disk?
I've been recently using more & more SATA over IDE in the client and a couple small servers. I like the nice small cable SATA uses over the wider ribbon for airflow if nothing else. SATA are much less expensive than SCSI.

[Chairman_Kaga]

You can get round IDE cables to help with airflow.