SSDs - State of the Product?

Handruin

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I may have answered the question incorrectly. For our enterprise SSDs we expect on worst case to hit 5 drive writes per day for what we do so we plan for that by using a drive rated for at least 5 WPD. This of course will depend on our customer's use-case but we have to plan for the higher end. In my specific project, we mirror two SSDs across two physical systems using DRBD and the device is used as a zfs SLOG device. The majority of our writes are synchronous which means the SSD gets used very frequently.
 

LunarMist

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No, there is no price yet. I think a local PCIe drive would be better since a rather high end NAS would be needed to match the STR and IOps.
 

LunarMist

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I may have answered the question incorrectly. For our enterprise SSDs we expect on worst case to hit 5 drive writes per day for what we do so we plan for that by using a drive rated for at least 5 WPD. This of course will depend on our customer's use-case but we have to plan for the higher end. In my specific project, we mirror two SSDs across two physical systems using DRBD and the device is used as a zfs SLOG device. The majority of our writes are synchronous which means the SSD gets used very frequently.

How many TB is that? I was thinking 8x4TB in RAID 5 would not see more than 1DRWD.
 

Handruin

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This would be 5WPD x 1.6TB (8TB) for our appliance. This is an enterprise backup appliance that supports hundreds of terabytes across many hosts.
 

LunarMist

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That's probably not the typical NAS use case. They mention Synology FS3017 which has 24 bays, so maybe they expect the load to be spread across a larger number of drives. Of course the FS3017 and 24x4TB for example would cost as much as some cars. Or maybe the Dudering will buy one. :D
 

Handruin

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That would be true that the load would be spread across all the drives assuming you built a NAS with all SSDs...however an all-SSD NAS is also not a typical NAS use case for most people.

With that kind of NAS configuration a more thorough discussion regarding the problem one is trying to address would be more beneficial. I would see limited value in using this as a file-based storage solution rather than build out a block-based scalable storage such as Gluster or Ceph with that amount of SSDs in play.
 

LunarMist

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The two use cases listed are all-flash NAS like the FS3017 and as caching SSDs such as found in many NAS (especially QNAP) nowadays.
I assume that Seagate is targeting a specific performance/durability/capacity compromise that fits those use cases and that their marketing believes there are enough users. If not they will be closed out at some point. :D
 

Handruin

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So, these Ironwolfs *might* be SOHO grade?


They are probably fine for SOHO or maybe even a small business. Like any good practice of data preservation one should always have good backups to protect of the inevitable drive failure.

The two use cases listed are all-flash NAS like the FS3017 and as caching SSDs such as found in many NAS (especially QNAP) nowadays.
I assume that Seagate is targeting a specific performance/durability/capacity compromise that fits those use cases and that their marketing believes there are enough users. If not they will be closed out at some point. :D

A caching SSD makes sense but the all-flash NAS seems like a weird fit for a NAS given the rather high cost of the drives. The Synology FS3017 looks to be a proper medium/large enterprise NAS offering that can handle this kind of IO along with the support for faster NICs like 25Gb and 40Gb with RDMA support and has dual Xeon CPUs. At a price of around $10,000 USD without the drives, I'd seriously need to look around at competitors before jumping into this unit. I would guess that this thing fully populated with SSDs would be around $30,000-$40,000 depending on the size and drive.

Given the investment, it might be worth considering an actual high performance storage array from the likes of Pure or Nimble and then put a NAS server in front of it.
 

LunarMist

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At a price of around $10,000 USD without the drives, I'd seriously need to look around at competitors before jumping into this unit. I would guess that this thing fully populated with SSDs would be around $30,000-$40,000 depending on the size and drive.

That's why I'm waiting for David to set one up. :LOL:
 

jtr1962

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LunarMist

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Right now QLC makes little sense because TLC is selling for about the same. However, if the price falls a lot lower I can see it being useful if people realize its limitations. Basically, it's fine for bulk storage where you'll mostly be reading, not writing.

The 4TB QVO is now $550 compared to ~$700 for the EVO or $1000 for the Pro. I wish they made an 8TB QVO.

EBH
 

Santilli

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The reference I remember was in Fast & Furious. It was sort of an economy car, at least next to a Dodge Charger 426 8-71 blown Hemi...
 

Santilli

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OK: Im impressed. Looks like the Evo started as pretty much a 4 door, street legal race car. Specs are similar to my old 64.5 mustang funny car. 2800 pounds, 350 HP, 5 to 6 speed, and fantastic suspension. I wish they would have had the prices. Must have started around 40-60 grand.
Wish I had one, without the spoilers, in a plain white wrapper...
Actually not.
In this day and age, buy a cheap eco car for the street. Spend 3-5 grand and buy a used Formula Vee. Spend the money on track time.
No radar cops on Sears Point or Laguna Seca.
 

LunarMist

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Why, are you making fun of the EVO? ;) I didn't think it was worth the EVO Pro for large data and low IOPs.
I've moved everything else to all those NAS arrays, so a larger capacity would be great to store more locally in the PC.
I've thought about RIAD 0, but I had some problems with that years ago.
 

Stereodude

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Why, are you making fun of the EVO? ;) I didn't think it was worth the EVO Pro for large data and low IOPs.
I've moved everything else to all those NAS arrays, so a larger capacity would be great to store more locally in the PC.
I've thought about RIAD 0, but I had some problems with that years ago.
Who said I was making fun of the EVO? I'm pretty sure I'm teasing you, not the drive.
 

LunarMist

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An EVO it is a degenerate object, so of course I'm the object of derision. I'm not sure what your issue is with the EVO or 4TB in particular. I have the 2TB M.2 in a notebook.
At least I know EVO is not some cheesy little car.
 

Stereodude

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An EVO it is a degenerate object, so of course I'm the object of derision. I'm not sure what your issue is with the EVO or 4TB in particular.
Just the fact that you think 4TB is small and that you have so much data you have to juggle the drives around.
 

LunarMist

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Every time the data is copied my memory cells are damaged. You wouldn't beconcerned about that?
 

Stereodude

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Every time the data is copied my memory cells are damaged. You wouldn't be concerned about that?
How much new data are you generating a day? I think we went over this before and you got all cagey. If you're writing that much data to the drives and are worried about the lifetime of the flash you should use enterprise drives with much higher rated endurance or using something other than flash based storage.
 

LunarMist

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It depends on the efficiency, which was about 82%. That is not bad for the type of product and load.
 

LunarMist

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The battery pack is not relevant here.
Anyway, the amount of new data is not the issue. If I move data back and forth from NAS to the SSD 5 times, it may be almost the same each time.
 

Handruin

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The battery pack is not relevant here.
Anyway, the amount of new data is not the issue. If I move data back and forth from NAS to the SSD 5 times, it may be almost the same each time.

Are you doing full backups every time? Why not incrementals?
 

LunarMist

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No, it's not really a backup since the second NAS is for that. I just prefer to work from an SSD.
 

LunarMist

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That seems like the Mac fusion drives like 10 years ago. Once the SSD part is continuously filled it slows down. Anyway I don't want any hard drives in the main computer.

I've considered using the JBLOD for a pair of 4TB SSDs, but I read that one is completely filled prior to the second so the first drive might not perform well being always full. The other option is the RAID 0 and I'm a bit concerned about the array dropping out or some general RAID issue with SSDs.
 

Santilli

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Hi
Has anyone tried one of these?
Intel Optane SSD 900P Series - solid state drive - 480 GB - PCI Express 3.0

Would it be bootable on my old motherboard?? See sig.

Any other bootable PCIE options that are cheaper, but would take advantage of an ope PCIE 16X slot?
 

LunarMist

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I'd suggest an M.2 870 EVO Plus or similar with a cheap PCIe adapter card. Add the NVMe drivers before moving the image to the M.2 drive.
 
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