SSD storage performance increase

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SSD storage performance increase

Perry Whittle

SSC Guru

Points: 234013
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August 20, 2012 at 11:54 am

#74127

So, I've updated all my storage for my ESXi server to SSD storage. I fitted it saturday afternoon and moved my 3 VMs to the new datastore on the SSD disk, just check out the looooooooooow disk latency.
Happy bunny?
... yes I am :-):-D
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GSquared SSC Guru Points: 260824 More actions · Answer 1

Nice.

I've been using SSD on my PC at home, and it's made a huge difference, but I haven't had a chance to play with them in a server environment yet.

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Grant Fritchey SSC Guru Points: 398882 More actions · Answer 2

It is amazingly faster. It's just not the same at all.

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Scott D. Jacobson SSCertifiable Points: 6149 More actions · Answer 3

Care to give any more information on the datastore? RAID level, HBAs, interconnects? Also, specifically what make and model of SSDs here? I'd think you're using something different from what GSquared has at home 😉

Also, what's the link between the VMware server at the datastore, iSCSI target or something else?

Edit: Forgot the obvious... Thanks for sharing!

Perry Whittle SSC Guru Points: 234013 More actions · Answer 4

Grant Fritchey (8/20/2012)
It is amazingly faster. It's just not the same at all.

it's great 🙂

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"Ya can't make an omelette without breaking just a few eggs" 😉

Perry Whittle SSC Guru Points: 234013 More actions · Answer 5

Scott D. Jacobson (8/20/2012)
Care to give any more information on the datastore? RAID level, HBAs, interconnects? Also, specifically what make and model of SSDs here? I'd think you're using something different from what GSquared has at home 😉
Also, what's the link between the VMware server at the datastore, iSCSI target or something else?
Edit: Forgot the obvious... Thanks for sharing!

No RAID, no HBAs, no nuttink!

My VMFS datastore which sits under my 3 VMs is a single 240GB Corsair Force SATA3 disk.

The disk is a local SSD not iSCSI, but just look at the drop in latency

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"Ya can't make an omelette without breaking just a few eggs" 😉

Scott D. Jacobson SSCertifiable Points: 6149 More actions · Answer 6

Perry Whittle (8/20/2012)
Scott D. Jacobson (8/20/2012)
Care to give any more information on the datastore? RAID level, HBAs, interconnects? Also, specifically what make and model of SSDs here? I'd think you're using something different from what GSquared has at home 😉
Also, what's the link between the VMware server at the datastore, iSCSI target or something else?
Edit: Forgot the obvious... Thanks for sharing!
No RAID, no HBAs, no nuttink!
My VMFS datastore which sits under my 3 VMs is a single 240GB Corsair Force SATA3 disk.
The disk is a local SSD not iSCSI, but just look at the drop in latency

Wow, just freaking wow. All that with direct attached storage. You are a lucky son of a gun.

Perry Whittle SSC Guru Points: 234013 More actions · Answer 7

Just goes to show how performance is actually available. I'm sure there would still be increased latency if it were an iSCSI datastore, you have so much more in between that affects the performance.

Imagine a bunch of these sitting under your sql server files, it possibly wouldn't even matter too much if all files were on the same disks, latency is so low.

At SQLBits earlier this year i had a demo of the Fusion IO kit, amazing performance 🙂

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"Ya can't make an omelette without breaking just a few eggs" 😉

Steve Jones - SSC Editor SSC Guru Points: 736212 More actions · Answer 8

Just make sure you have good backups. When SSDs fail, they can fail quickly with no warning.

Ray K SSC-Dedicated Points: 31163 More actions · Answer 9

Steve Jones - SSC Editor (8/21/2012)
Just make sure you have good backups. When SSDs fail, they can fail quickly with no warning.

I was wondering about this. Is there a RAID equivalent for SSD's?

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Steve Jones - SSC Editor SSC Guru Points: 736212 More actions · Answer 10

Steve Jones - SSC Editor

SSC Guru

Points: 736212

August 21, 2012 at 11:34 am

#1528279

You can use RAID with SSDs just like with HDDs.

Perry Whittle SSC Guru Points: 234013 More actions · Answer 11

Sure, you can RAID SSDs but you'll be doing it for the redundancy capabilities more than anything as the performance is already high as a result of the SSDs ultra low latency

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Nadrek SSC-Insane Points: 20039 More actions · Answer 12

While I haven't touched the PCIe SSD's yet (Fusion-IO, OCZ Z-drive, etc.), with the SATA and SAS SSD's, treat them similarly to extremely short-stroked spindle disks - high throughput, very low latency, but they can still fail, and they still benefit from RAID. I've worked with SSD's set up in RAID1 pairs and RAID5 sets both; the RAID5 sets had considerably higher throughput (>1.4TB/s peak), matching their greater number of drives.

In particular, sometimes you do random IO, and the SSD's should blow away spinning disks. For sequential IO, good SSD's should still be faster in every aspect on a per drive basis than 15k SAS drives. RAID with modern controllers only enhances that until you hit the controller's own limits.

As was said above, when SSD's fail, they fail very abruptly. Worse, when SSD's fail, you don't have much of a way to wipe the data off them other than by physically destroying the drive (sledgehammer, torch, welding equipment, etc).

Scott D. Jacobson SSCertifiable Points: 6149 More actions · Answer 13

Nadrek (8/22/2012)
Worse, when SSD's fail, you don't have much of a way to wipe the data off them other than by physically destroying the drive (sledgehammer, torch, welding equipment, etc).

What is a rifle, Alex?

GSquared SSC Guru Points: 260824 More actions · Answer 14

Nadrek (8/22/2012)
.... Worse, when SSD's fail, you don't have much of a way to wipe the data off them other than by physically destroying the drive (sledgehammer, torch, welding equipment, etc).

Which is also necessary if you want to actually destroy the data on HDDs. Degaussing them is only partially effective and forensic labs have been known to recover partial/complete data off of magnetically wiped disks.

So, use either of my two favorite chemical processes: thermite or chlorine trifluoride. Much fun!

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