SSDs good for Server USE

[alex1002]

Good Day,
Is there any more affordable SSDs that can be recommend for an Server environment.


I know intel 730 may be the best, but is there anything more affordable

 

[rtwjunkie]

Well, are you asking for storage, or for the OS?

I use a Crucial M500 for the OS drive for my server, and HDD's for all my storage.

 

[Kursah]

Depends on how important your data is on the server...if you skimp out and go with a cheap MX100 or old SSD, you might be fine you might not. If you purchase an enterprise SSD that has the correct hardware for the job and a solid warranty, you'll most likely be good to go and assuredly more than a standard consumer SSD. You get what you pay for and risk when you skimp.

If it's a home server, I'd say slap an MX100 or even two, and use them in a mirrored configuration so that if one goes down the other one is ready to go on the spot, along with a NAS for backup duty.

What type of environment is this server in? Home? Small Business? Corporate? A project? Data is money and lost data is lost time and both are lost money. Get the good stuff. If it's a core server where you're running the host OS as a virtualization host, that's a little less critical but still to prevent downtime I would stay with the right parts for the job.

 

[rtwjunkie]

Very nice, detailed answer! While I'm floundering about waiting to get some of those answers, you went ahead and covered the whole gamut of possibilities.

 

[bpgt64]

It really depends on the what your doing. The newer Samsung 850 Evo's have very high write tolerance. Which I am assuming is the main concern.

 

[Easy Rhino]

AthlonX2 has some enterprise SSDs for sale you can pick up.

 

[alex1002]

I have a small business and low budgets. I cannot spend all my $$$ on enterprise SSDs. My SSDs are usually always in RAID10. Is still a huge risk?
Also I have my test LAB Server based on ESXi that will use SSDs.

 

[revin]

Honestly, the Intel 730's are made just for that !
Wish you could have got in on the holiday sale's it was awesome price's

After hearing what Josh at Maximun PC learned from his visit at Intel Storage, and and the pure hell they test them to is incredable !
The biggest thing about an SSD is a "Soft Error", and that is what Intel has made it's top priority. It is THE most deadly issue with an SSD.
Here is the Podcast, it's kinda toward the mid-end, Very informative and
I'm amazed the other vendor's have not followed suite, because just having a "better/faster" number in SSD's is kinda a joke, only for braging right's, till the Data failures come up those fast number's are for e-pen marketing.
I'd rather have hardware that has been ran thru the ringer and know it will be safer, than micro points faster

 

[W1zzard]

Crucial MX100 all the way, affordable, reliable, fast, easy to replace if failed, and (just like with HDDs) always use RAID so you can survive a disk loss.

 

[bpgt64]

I would simply mirror a pair of Samsung 850 Evo's or Pro's. Crucial MX100 is also awesome. It just depends on the load(how much write/read your doing--to determine how long they last.)

 

[W1zzard]

I'd say the real life performance difference between Samsung 850 and MX100 is not big enough to justify the extra cost.

When you build SSD mirroring, it's a good idea to mix a pre-used drive with a brand-new one, to avoid that both hit write-related issues at exactly the same time. Going even further, you could mirror a MX100 with a Samsung 850 to also avoid hardware related issues that could occur at the same time on both drives.

 

[bpgt64]

I'd say the real life performance difference between Samsung 850 and MX100 is not big enough to justify the extra cost.

When you build SSD mirroring, it's a good idea to mix a pre-used drive with a brand-new one, to avoid that both hit write-related issues at exactly the same time. Going even further, you could mirror a MX100 with a Samsung 850 to also avoid hardware related issues that could occur at the same time on both drives.

Agreed...crucial is definitely more cost effective at close and the performance difference is indistinguishable.

 

[CAPSLOCKSTUCK]

it's a good idea to mix a pre-used drive with a brand-new one, to avoid that both hit write-related issues at exactly the same time.

I would never have thought of that. But makes a lot of sense. Same batch.....same issues/faults.




(bpgt64 your bear might fancy a bite on my apple)

 

[alex1002]

No comments on 730s from intel?

 

[revin]

No comments on 730s from intel?

Did you listen to that podcast ? It's unbelievable !
BTW, they respect TPU very much, but any rate, after all the work they put into testing and even having that [Knutt? brainaic that wrote SATA] plus like they said can do instance changes during processing ect.

I think the mindset is that Intel "cost" is too much, but you know they do a lot of R&D to justify some cost.
It's easy to maass produce stuff, even if it's the fastest on market, but takeing the chance of random testing here and there, well.........................................

Like wizz said, there could be some "batch" issue's, and proablly moreso with other vendors since they cant afford to go to the extreme's Intel can, but I dont think that would be an issue from Intel as much, since it's all done "inhouse", and like Josh said, they test every drive, and top that off with torture testing "thousand" at a time trying to kill them, cant kill'em even microwaving them.

I think the podcast speaks volume's to just how intense they are, it's just the matter of what cost factor is.
And if everyone here listens to it, I think they'd agree, it's insane how Intel is doing it.
The #1 thing that still stand's out is that about the"soft errors", when will other vendors get that indepth ?

Data failure 1 in what 100 million hours or what ever it was, and that Read and Write's pretty much have no Effect on logitivity, that alone is a deal breaker

The IT guy said they had Intels {MX?} for few years in the old[sic] main frame, and now moving frrom the 530's to 730's, 64 in all for securing manufacturing info a lot vendor's that we do National Security products
Like I said the holiday season was killer prices 480Gb for $179-199, 250Gb for $89-119

 

[alex1002]

Thanks I listened to the podcast. And Hopefully I can afford some Intel 730s.

 

[revin]

@alex1002
Intel 730's Sale almost/same as good as holiday price
240Gb $119
480Gb @219

In RAID 0 they scale really great, and 70Gb/day with 5 year warranty/
It's said the 480's in RAID offer over 1Gb/s, but there again these are really Enterprise drives for the end user.

 

[Uplink10]

I recommend buying MX100, Samsung 850 Pro is enterprise grade (3D V-nand ==> 40 nm chips, MLC) and has the best endurance therefore it is suitable for heavy heavy workload.

 

[revin]

Since the OP need's them in the Server, the MX100's are about 1/2 of read/writes a day vs the 730's.
Like he said the cost of the Intel's was high, but those sale price's and with the "Soft Error" detection/correction and that they are already overclock'd is pretty much a no brainer for 730's

 

[Aquinus]

At work we have two dev servers with 4x512GB Samsung 830 Pros and they work fine, they're in RAID-10, no issues. In reality, a half decent SSD is going to last a reasonable amount of time. More often than not, server SSDs do one or two things:

1. Some enterprise grade SSDs use SLC flash which has crazy write endurance.
2. Most MLC enterprise grade SSDs just have extra space dedicated to over-provisioning, something you can do yourself without paying more.

There is always a chance a drive will die, so enterprise grade drives might offer a different kind of warranty, but generally speaking, as long as you don't fill them up, they'll work fine. It takes a lot of write cycles to kill a block with how wear leveling works if you're not using up the entire SSD(s).

 

[revin]

Good point, that's why the 730's are the best of both worlds. But at the sale price.
Since OP seem's to be putting them to pretty fair amount of use, and even acknowlege's the Intel's, I think we'd all agree that sale price is killer
If you get a chance, check out that podcast , one thing for me is since 1981 our IT guy had shoved Intel down our throat, but in all fairness with aprox 200 pc's, and the servers that have to maintain data for manufaturing good's for national security company's, and keep up with the Engineering dept, Cad ect, they hve always stayed with Intel's SSD's, and before that it was IBM HDD's.
TBH that would make me kinda bias, but it has held up true about Intel [Foxcon] and IBM/Hitichia/Toshiba from my vantage of view at this company but the podcast just put's it over the top for fairly critical use SSD's
Imagine having a few of these