Costly SSDs Worth It, Users Say

Lucas123 writes "When you're paying $30,000 for a PCIe flash card, it had better demonstrate an ROI. While users are still struggling with why solid state storage cost so much, when they target the technology at the right applications, the results can be staggering. For example, when Dan Marbes, a systems engineer at Associated Bank, deployed just three SSDs for his B.I. applications, the flash storage outperformed 60 15,000rpm Fibre Channel disk drives in small-block reads. But when Marbes used the SSDs for large-block random reads and any writes, 'the 60 15K spindles crushed the SSDs,' he said,"

My approach

[Anrego]

Small (and cheap) 32GB SSD for my desktop...

Big powerful 12TB file server using traditional disks for the bulk of my data.

Performance for the stuff where the SSD makes a difference (program files), cheap storage for the stuff where it doesn't (just about everything else).

And if that 32GB drive dies (unproven technology.. MTBF is still a guess) .. I'll buy another cheap (probably cheaper at that point) one and restore from my daily backup.

Re:Meh

[Rockoon]

15K enterprise drives cost around ~$1/gigabyte ... not all that much cheaper than SSD's which cost around ~$2/gigabyte (MLC) or ~$5/gigabyte (SLC)

Now, the comparison in the summary is between 3 SSD's and 60 15K HDD's.. in other words, the HDD solution was enormously more expensive. (and thats NOT counting the cost of the stack of Fiber Channel raid enclosures, let alone the power that 60 stack draws)

You dont seem to know what you are talking about. SSD's arent much more expensive per gigabyte than HDD's in performance enterprise environments, and always significantly outperform for equal investment, with less power costs. The only place the "cheaper per gigabyte" argument is true is when you can get away with inexpensive HDD's.. in other words, you heard people talk about one thing but didnt know that it didnt apply to another.

When you dont know what you are talking about, act like it.

Re:Meh

[antifoidulus]

The difference is even starker when you take rack space into account. The largest 15k drive I could find was 600 gb. Enterprise SSDs on the other hand(if you dont want to go the PCIE route) are right now approaching 1 TB for a 3.5" drive, and the difference in density between the two is only going to grow. The reduced amount of rack space SSDs take up is going to further decrease operating costs.

Re:My approach

[petteyg359]

You're doing it wrong. Get some RAM and mount a tmpfs, and it'll be a hell of a lot faster than your SSD. It'll be at least 60% cheaper, too.

My own very recent experience (2 weeks ago)

[Raleel]

I moved a small 4TB database from 24x 256G 15k SAS drives to 24x 240G OCZ Vertex 3 SATA3 drives. I ran a few queries on the old and the new. same data, same parameters, same amount of data pulled. Both were hooked up via PCIe 8x slots.

the SSD crushed the SAS. Not just a mere 2x or 3x crushing. A _FIFTEEN TIMES FASTER_ crushing. This was pulling about a million rows out. 12 seconds (SSD) vs 189 seconds (spindles)

Cost difference? under $50 per drive more expensive for SSD. I think our actual rate was around $10 per drive more. However, the system as a whole (array+drives+computer) was $12k less. No contest... for our particular application, SSD hands down makes it actually work.

we'll be moving the larger database (same data, same function) to SSD as soon as we can.