SSD's in enterprise?

[KingGheedora]

Are SSD's used in the enterprise? I'm interested in whether or not they are a viable replacement for 15,000rpm disks used in RAID arrays (RAID 1 or 10).

After googling "SSD's in enterprise," I get the sense that SSD is still seen as an unproven technology. We need to set up a new server and I want to know if it would be seen as foolish to ask the IT guys to use SSD's instead of HDD's.

Also, kind of annoying that a lot of SSD benchmarks only compare SSD's to each other, but a lot of people looking at benchmarks are still on classic HDD's, so they don't get a sense of how an improvement an SSD can provide.

 

[wpcoe]

Also, kind of annoying that a lot of SSD benchmarks only compare SSD's to each other, but a lot of people looking at benchmarks are still on classic HDD's, so they don't get a sense of how an improvement an SSD can provide.

:thumbsup: :thumbsup: Hear, hear.

And, when a review does include an HDD for reference, it is usually the highest performing (and expensive) HDD, not what an average home user would be accustomed to. I'm sure they do that to show that SDD's are faster than even the fastest HDD, which is nice, but I'm also sure that average users would be more impressed to see how much faster an SSD would be compared to what they already have (probably a mid-value HDD).

I'm using a 64GB Kingston drive that trendy techie folks tend to sneer at because of its middle-of-the-road performance when compared to other (often newer) SDDs. But, when comparing it to my HDD (which I would otherwise be using as my boot drive), the Kingston flies:

So, reviewers, how about including a mainstream HDD for comparison to the SDDs?

 

[Zap]

SSDs are indeed used in enterprise. There are SSDs marketed for that, such as Intel's X series.

 

[mutz]

SSD's actually came from the enterprise market to the mainstream one,
they were very high priced for any user to use few years ago, much more then they are now.
you can have a look at storagesearch site where they heavily discuss SSD's for all kind of applications, and there are many options for the enterprise market raging from simple SLC drives to PCI-e ones RAMSAN's, new 30K write cycle MLC's and so on.

 

[FishAk]

There are workarounds for the benchmarks. For instance this set compares the Agility 2 100Gb, X-25V 40Gb, 600Gb VelociRaptor, Momentus 500Gb hybrid, and the Mometus 500Gb 5400 RPM HDD. And this set compares the same VelociRaptor with several HDDs. By putting the numbers in a spreadsheet, you can make your own custom direct comparisons. The test methods are the same, as shown by the VelociRaptor.

 

[adamantinepiggy]

The issue with consumer versus enterprise SSD sales is that SSD's are usually customized for the enterprise purposes, even if it's the exact same hardware (or very close to) the consumer models. Enterprise stuff is ususally sold with complete "solutions" versus individual SSD's. That means the SSD's generally for the enterprise are is also required (from the particular product/solution vender) to have custom firmware specific to who is requesting them.

So for example, say Dell has a new NAS-type storage solution for the enterprise and wants xxx-brand SSD's for use in it. Because they know exactly how and what makes up the hardware/software of their NAS product, they will also demand custom firmware, often to the operational exclusion of other vender products.

So they will go to Samsung, Micron, Intel, or whoever and say, we want an SSD with these particular features turned on/off and we don't want it to be able to be as compatible or easily changed to work in our competitor's enterprise products, and to ensure this, we will buy xxxxx bajillion of them. Because the SSD enterprise product is now part of a greater "solution" product versus a individual consumer who-knows-how-it-will-be-used product, the SSD's meant for the enterprise market, might actually be slower, or dumber, than what you can buy retail. They only become faster/better/longer lasting, etc, because when used in the custom "solution", the custom whole "solution" is greater than the individual parts.

For the hypothetical Dell product I used for an example, you could "probably" (but not always as Dell might have even requested a custom connector) remove the SSD from the Enterprise "solution" package and stick it in a normal PC. However, because of the custom firmware and other Dell requirements for their original product, there's a good chance it won't work as well or good as a standard consumer retail SSD part of the same model line in a typical PC.

 

[alaricljs]

To add on what adamantinepiggy said, Sun 7310 storage systems use several 18GB SSDs in every tray for metadata logging and caching. The label specifically states that they are write optimized. Shame I can't rip one out of our array and test it

 

[LokutusofBorg]

All the major SAN vendors are selling SSD shelves now. And the PCIe SSDs are gaining momentum. I'm actually pushing at work for a test server with a couple OCZ Z-Drives to vet the technology. We're going to need a storage upgrade on our production DB server in around 6 months here, and if the PCIe SSDs prove themselves in our test server, then I may be able to convince the powers that be to use them in the production server.

I've linked this elsewhere on the forums, but here it is again:

http://www.brentozar.com/archive/2010/03/fusion-io-iodrive-review-fusionio/

And if you go to FusionIO's site, they have several case studies worth reading. Wine.com, for instance, is running their databases exclusively off of FusionIO drives.

Very interesting stuff.

 

[Reliant]

SSD's do have their place in the enterprise. Think about it this way. All these examples are just examples and not exact numbers. Say you have a an application, VDI solution, NFS store, etc, anything on a NAS that requires a certain I/O count to be successful, but is not really requiring a huge space count. To achieve this with spindles you throw a lot of spindles at it. While this seems still cheaper than SSD's, you might require say 100 spindle based drives vs 25 flash based drives, and that price point might be a lot closer than you'd think.

 

[alaricljs]

TCO is where that price comparison gets even tighter since 100 spindles is gonna suck the wattage and physical space.

 

[tweakboy]

SSD does not have capacity for enterprise. Forget it!

 

[Zstream]

Are SSD's used in the enterprise? I'm interested in whether or not they are a viable replacement for 15,000rpm disks used in RAID arrays (RAID 1 or 10).

After googling "SSD's in enterprise," I get the sense that SSD is still seen as an unproven technology. We need to set up a new server and I want to know if it would be seen as foolish to ask the IT guys to use SSD's instead of HDD's.

Also, kind of annoying that a lot of SSD benchmarks only compare SSD's to each other, but a lot of people looking at benchmarks are still on classic HDD's, so they don't get a sense of how an improvement an SSD can provide.

I have evaluated quite a few SSD enterprise vendors these past two years. I can assure you, they cannot provide the reliability and up-time as a normal SAN solution. In addition, the cost is so high, that the ROI is not really there.

The only time when I would need a SSD enterprise solution is in the form of a heavy utilized database. Unfortunately, the database in most companies does not compel them to move from SAN to SSD. It's about the ROI stupid!

 

[Zstream]

SSD does not have capacity for enterprise. Forget it!

Yes they do. You think that people buy one SSD or something ?

Go look here for a real enterprise solution...

http://www.violin-memory.com/

http://www.dataram.com/

 

[OCGuy]

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...-517-_-Product

Get out the CC!

 

[tweakboy]

Your right after following this thread you are right Zstream andOCguy,,,, it will be costly as heck tho,, I mean its not worth it to do dont you say , at least not right now where 2TB drives are 60 bucks and what not and to get 2TB of space from SSDs will cost a bundle over a thousand dollars easy... see vat I mean.. gl and gb

 

[sub.mesa]

For the enterprise, storage capacity and price were always very low priorities, while reliability, IOps performance and performance-per-watt were in high demand. SSDs are exactly that; and many businesses may opt to not use HDDs at all unless they have mass storage data (like backups).

But a database server; why would it need a HDD? Why use two expensive RAID controller with 40 enterprise HDDs, if you can get the same performance from just one SSD, well more performance even, without any expensive controller.

So SSDs are a blessing for the enterprise market, that's why SSDs initially were only marketed towards the server industry. Products like FusionIO still focus on the server industry, and with good reason. Good profit margins can be made in this market, where competition had not reached the point of saturation.

HDDs stay a very attractive choice to store huge amounts of mass storage data for the lowest price possible; but only if performance is a non-issue (i.e. no random access to the HDDs).

 

[mv2devnull]

"No random access" sounds like "tape" to me. There can still be real tapes behind HDD-based virtual tape archives.

@tweakboy: Try buying enterprise level HDD storage. For the "cheap and slow" SATA you might have to pay $500 per TB. But then again, a single "box" would hold 100-500 drives ...

 

[ViviTheMage]

Yup, live = ssd
quick storage = mechanical 15k
long term = tape

it's win win setup.

 

[Cable God]

I use quite a bit of SSD in my company. Our clients use it heavily as well. It is here, and has been here for longer than it has at a consumer level. Yes, it is expensive, but the competitive advantage and return more than pays for them.

 

[ochadd]

I'm in the same boat as the OP. Have several older servers sporting 15k rpm RAID 5 arrays. A single RAID 1 set of consumer SSDs would be more than enough to virtualize them all onto the same machine. It's the uncertainty and failure rate that is holding me back.

 

[sub.mesa]

Use software mirroring for SSD, that may be more reliable and doesn't mean you have to use any particular hardware/controller.

If data security is important but uptime is not; i would choose mirroring but instead rely on backup and run an SSD without any RAID (or software RAID0). But if you need uptime protection you would want redundancy on the SSDs as well. Try Sandforce SSDs since Intels degrade quickly without TRIM.

 

[Cable God]

Use software mirroring for SSD, that may be more reliable and doesn't mean you have to use any particular hardware/controller.

If data security is important but uptime is not; i would choose mirroring but instead rely on backup and run an SSD without any RAID (or software RAID0). But if you need uptime protection you would want redundancy on the SSDs as well. Try Sandforce SSDs since Intels degrade quickly without TRIM.

Yup, sandforce drives scale really high in soft raid.

 

[Emulex]

pci express cards are not enterprise. neither is software mirroring.

800gb mlc are coming in feb. plus new controllers to back them. enterprise power dispersement, enteprise cooling, enteprise hot-swap.

 

[Mark R]

Yup, sandforce drives scale really high in soft raid.

Not just softraid, either.

1,000,000 IOPS can be easily achieved with 24 sandforce SSDs on a decent SAS RAID controller.

 

[sub.mesa]

pci express cards are not enterprise. neither is software mirroring.

800gb mlc are coming in feb. plus new controllers to back them. enterprise power dispersement, enteprise cooling, enteprise hot-swap.

Power dispersement? You mean heat dissipation? And what about cooling? This is about SSDs which use very little power; unlike the 400W 2U servers that aren't all that rare. Hot-swap is (mandatory) supported since SATA 3.0Gbps.

Enterprise environments can use any product that fit in their situation. Some products are specifically targeted towards enterprise environments, that does not automatically mean you have to stick to those kind of products.

An enterprise 15k SAS disk still won't be very reliable, for example. So 'enterprise' is a label that perhaps gets too much glamor.