SSD

[MadMax]

Right on I would know nothing about that, and I don't really know very much about huge storage arrays for big corporations. I am into PC gaming and know a bit about it and on that platform SSD is what everyone uses for their OS drives cause they tend to be more stable and are way faster then the velociraptor, the previous king of the gaming rig drive. Storage is usually a couple 7200 rpm terabyte drives of some sort, and that is what I use so I am not trying to say spinning drives are useless.

Gaming is the only context I know about this stuff in and I have been building overclocked watercooled monster rigs for years, so I concede on the corporation stuff but any gamer who builds their own PC uses SSD for OS.

So your the one who is trippin

[Merc1138]

I was coming from a place of having your SSD dedicated to your OS so for multiple terabyte storage spinning drives are the only option but when SSD get closer to the large drives in terms of cost they will be obsolete.

Uhh, SSD still has a very long way to go for pricing to be considered for anything remotely close to bulk storage. Cheap SSD pricing is around $0.80/GB right now. HDDs(not talking SAS or NL-SAS here) typically(and this is with prices still high after that flooding in Thailand) are $0.10-$0.14/GB.

Then there is the density issue. 2-3TB SSD? In a 2.5" form factor you're going to be getting what, 512GB SSD? Ok, a 3TB HDD might be 3.5" but you're only going to get 2x512GB SSD in the same area as a 3TB HDD. Not to mention, you'll need an additional port on a SATA controller for that. 1/3 the storage capacity per area, twice the connections required, and 4 times the cost.

3TB worth of SSD? Have fun buying a new SATA controller for the 6 ports you're going to need, 3x 3.5" drive bays(or 1 5.25" bay if you've got the right adapter) for $3600(plus tax, and controller card).

SSD does not come close to HDD for cost or capacity, and will not for years to come. SSD is also marginal for most applications where such storage is required for the average home user, or even "pro-sumer", and really only serves a purpose in a few very specific environments(NAS/SAN storage hosting virtual machines where IOPS are more critical than raw throughput comes to mind, definitely not most videogames or downloaded movies).

Then of course there is the matter of HDD storage density also increasing(4TB HDDs are due out soon). You might as well be talking about everyone having flying cars in 10 years(SSDs aren't as new as some people think).

And of course for serious bulk data archiving, tape is still one of the most common methods for a number of reasons(even though some companies have been moving towards replacing tape with HDDs in the past couple of years).

[ExtremeX]

Right on I would know nothing about that, and I don't really know very much about huge storage arrays for big corporations. I am into PC gaming and know a bit about it and on that platform SSD is what everyone uses for their OS drives cause they tend to be more stable and are way faster then the velociraptor, the previous king of the gaming rig drive. Storage is usually a couple 7200 rpm terabyte drives of some sort, and that is what I use so I am not trying to say spinning drives are useless.

Gaming is the only context I know about this stuff in and I have been building overclocked watercooled monster rigs for years, so I concede on the corporation stuff but any gamer who builds their own PC uses SSD for OS.

So your the one who is trippin

I don't think either one of us are "trippin"... Since your applications differ greatly from mine.

For the typical desktop user, SSD are great for OS and drives that will experience heavy i/o or sustained transfer speeds. Some users don't understand that some SSD are tailored for different application even in the desktop workload. There are SSD drives that do better with small read/write high IOPS, and some which excel in sustained transfer rates which actually deliver less IOPS. Its the reason I have various different types and brands of SSDs in my own person desktop due to different types of workloads.

From an enterprise standpoint, I have customers that range from the home enthusiast looking for a storage array for their high end home theater to people who are looking for for fill a specific niche in their application. For example video editing firms to larger companies who have needs for vitalization and database storage system. These guys are usually the ones with the big bucks and also give me the opportunity to play with things most people can just dream of.

SSDs have been a game changer, I'm sure everyone can agree what the benefits are, but to this day, the spinning platter drives still have their place. Storage density (cost per GB) is still one of the biggest selling points, especially when performance limitations can to bridged with high end rail controllers and multi drive arrays. Even with that said, if IOPS are the name of the game, the rotational disk just cant do what an SSD can, but with a good raid controller and enough drives, system transfer rates can be matched!

Concerning the talk about tape drives... even that isn't obsolete yet.... I deal with D2D (disk to disk) backup solutions for a lot of customers, I am an authorized Acronis reseller and a certified engineer... most of my solutions are all based on rotational drives. It still has not replaced the tape drive, only because its easier to get that data off site. Depending on the company and amount of data, some are considering site to site replication along with cloud storage to rededuce the cost of tape maintenance and equipment.

[MadMax]

To ExtremeX, I was being sarcastic on the trippin comment on the above post, hence the smiley face. Thanks for the info, I didn't know with a raid card and hard drive u could come near the performance of SSD, can't u just raid SSD in a similar fashion and have even faster speeds? Again I really only know about computers from a gaming aspect but what you said makes sence so I can't really argue.

To Merc1138, I agree with what you are saying exept for I think SSD prices are going to drop faster than you think.

[Merc1138]

To ExtremeX, I was being sarcastic on the trippin comment on the above post, hence the smiley face. Thanks for the info, I didn't know with a raid card and hard drive u could come near the performance of SSD, can't u just raid SSD in a similar fashion and have even faster speeds? Again I really only know about computers from a gaming aspect but what you said makes sence so I can't really argue.

To Merc1138, I agree with what you are saying exept for I think SSD prices are going to drop faster than you think.

They're only dropping for now due to NAND price drops(that's what is keeping their costs high in the first place). They aren't going to be capable of matching HDDs for $/GB or the storage density any time soon.

[JDay]

I didn't know with a raid card and hard drive u could come near the performance of SSD

It costs a bit more, however you do get more storage capacity. The space required and the extra energy consumption factor in too. It really depends on your application which solution is best and with 4xHDD in RAID0 you're still not going to touch the speed of current SSDs. My desktops single SSD runs faster than the SSD RAID setup in the link below.

http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/ssd-memoright,1926-10.html

[JDay]

They're only dropping for now due to NAND price drops(that's what is keeping their costs high in the first place). They aren't going to be capable of matching HDDs for $/GB or the storage density any time soon.

The prices are dropping due to a price war. The major SSD manufacturers are trying to force the smaller guys out of the market.

SSD vendors set to trigger price war to force out smaller peers

A number of channel retailers, which usually sell commodity memory products including flash drives and memory cards, recently began to offer SSDs, the sources observed. Some of the leading SSD producers are concerned about inferior products that might disrupt development of the market, and therefore have resorted to price-cutting measures to force the retailers to leave the market, the sources indicated.

http://www.maximumpc.com/article/news/are_we_ssd_price_war

[Merc1138]

Yes... and the reason they can do that is due to the decreasing cost of NAND flash memory, which is going to hit a point where it bottoms out and won't be getting any cheaper.

The SSD manufacturers aren't selling these things at a loss if that's what you're thinking.

[sfwdiy]

I have seen a higher failure rate on SSDs than quality platters.

...have had a failure rate of over 50% at a roughly 6 month cycle.

Good for an OS drive, but store no critical data on an SSD.

SSD. You're doing it wrong.

Seriously though, what brand and model drive are you seeing a 50% failure rate over six months with? I've experienced nowhere near a failure rate that high.

I currently have this many SSDs in use between the data center and office laptops:



These have been installed over the last 2-3 years, with the bulk of them averaging somewhere around a year old.

I can count the number of SSD failures I've had on one hand.

--B

[ExtremeX]

To ExtremeX, I was being sarcastic on the trippin comment on the above post, hence the smiley face. Thanks for the info, I didn't know with a raid card and hard drive u could come near the performance of SSD, can't u just raid SSD in a similar fashion and have even faster speeds? Again I really only know about computers from a gaming aspect but what you said makes sence so I can't really argue.

To Merc1138, I agree with what you are saying exept for I think SSD prices are going to drop faster than you think.

No worries!, I forgot to add the smiley face to mine too. Its all just good conversation.

When you raid traditional spindle drives, the biggest key benefit is really sequential / sustained transfer speeds. Those can match SSD drives depending on the configuration. For example, a firm dealing with large video files, like surveillance camera DVR system, would greatly benefit from using regular drives over SSD. Capacity alone being the main one, plus system like this does not come across large amounts of random i/o, small file reads/writes. The benefits of using SSD drives for something like this is almost zero, and healthy array in something like raid 10 for example will still provide enough IOPS to deal with anything the operator might request for this type of workload.

When dealing with larger RAID / SSD arrays, the main issue I've run into time and time again is hitting the processor limits of the raid controllers themselves! SSD drives in larger configurations are so fast that the controller ends up becoming the bottleneck.

I still prefer to use regular SSD drives in a NON raid configuration... some might ask why, its because from my testing and workloads I am not seeing REAL WORLD benefits from the increased sequential transfer speeds or even the IOPS it could deliver. Benchmark testing doesn't always correspond to real world benefits. Not to mention the lack of things like TRIM, which can be debatable, but I like to have it from a maintenance longevity standpoint. My workload is primary dealing with VMWare virtual machines for work...

Another thing to keep in mind, Not all SSD drives are made equal...
Intel 510 series is better at sequential data patterns,
Intel 310 series has excellent random data performance, and actually makes a better OS drive.
Crucial SSD are a excellent mix of the two, but write speeds scale with size, so buy the larger drives.
I pick different drives depending on its intended use or application.

I have a LSI 9260-16i I was using with my SSDs for testing, but ultimately found its way into a 15 drive supermicro chassis and its running a mix of 15k SAS and 7200 RPM WD RE3 drives for my personal server.

Here are a couple youtube videos that are worth a watch if you are intrested in this stuff.

[dem0critus]

SSD: Great pc upgrade, or the greatest pc upgrade?

I was also blown away at how fast these babies are.