Almost 20 TB (Or $50,000) Of SSD DC S3700 Drives, Benchmarked

[compton]

We've already reviewed Intel's SSD DC S3700 and determined it to be a fast, consistent performer. But what happens when we take two-dozen (or about $50,000) worth of them and create a massive RAID 0 array? Come along as we play around in storage heaven.

Almost 20 TB (Or $50,000) Of SSD DC S3700 Drives, Benchmarked : Read more

 

[ASHISH65]

very good review and also helpfull!

 

[mayankleoboy1]

IIRC, Intel has enabled TRIM for RAID 0 setups. Doesnt that work here too?

 

[Novulux]

You have graphs labeled as MB/s when it should be IOPS?

 

[DarkSable]

Idbuaha.

I want.

 

[techcurious]

I like the 3D graphs..

 

[cangelini]

[citation][nom]Novulux[/nom]You have graphs labeled as MB/s when it should be IOPS?[/citation]
Fixing now!

 

[sodaant]

Those graphs should be labeled IOPS, there's no way you are getting a terabyte per second of throughput.

 

[cryan]

[citation][nom]mayankleoboy1[/nom]IIRC, Intel has enabled TRIM for RAID 0 setups. Doesnt that work here too?[/citation]

Intel has implemented TRIM in RAID, but you need to be using TRIM-enabled SSDs attached to their 7 series motherboards. Then, you have to be using Intel's latest 11.x RST drivers. If you're feeling frisky, you can update most recent motherboards with UEFI ROMs injected with the proper OROMs for some black market TRIM. Works like a charm.

In this case, we used host bus adapters, not Intel onboard PHYs, so Intel's TRIM in RAID doesn't really apply here.


Regards,
Christopher Ryan

 

[cryan]

[citation][nom]DarkSable[/nom]Idbuaha.I want.[/citation]

And I want it back! Intel needed the drives back, so off they went. I can't say I blame them since 24 800GB S3700s is basically the entire GDP of Canada.

[citation][nom]techcurious[/nom]I like the 3D graphs..[/citation]

Thanks! I think they complement the line charts and bar charts well. That, and they look pretty bitchin'.


Regards,
Christopher Ryan

 

[utroz]

That sucks about your backplanes holding you back, and yes trying to do it with regular breakout cables and power cables would have been a total nightmare, possible only if you made special holding racks for the drives and had multiple power suppy units to have enough sata power connectors. (unless you used the dreaded y-connectors that are know to be iffy and are not commercial grade) I still would have been interested in someone doing that if someone is crazy enough to do it just for testing purposes to see how much the backplanes are holding performance back... But thanks for all the hard work, this type of benching is by no means easy. I remember doing my first Raid with Iwill 2 port ATA-66 Raid controller with 4 30GB 7200RPM drives and it hit the limits of PCI at 133MB/sec. I tried Raid 0, 1, and 0+1. You had to have all the same exact drives or it would be slower than single drives. The thing took forever to build the arrays and if you shut off the computer wrong it would cause huge issues in raid 0... Fun times...

 

[hansrotec]

with the crucial m500 960 (599.99 usd) out you could drop the cost by a pretty penny putting in in range of groups

 

[PadaV4]

The 3d graphs look sexy :d

 

[Aegean BM]

Nice to see "Sky is the limit" once in a while because we're curios and because yesteryear's sky is today's budget rack. (Although in my humble prediction, I can't afford this setup for 10 years.)

That said, I would dearly like to see the follow up "Fastest Windows Storage for $1000". (I assume it would be RAID 0 of two 500GB SSD.) I picked a grand because it's a common anchor point, affordable today, and anything less is probably just "Get yourself the biggest SSD you can afford on our monthly SSD comparison chart."

 

[Aegean BM]

SSD RAID 0 is sexy. With HDD being so massive and cheap, I wonder how close HDD can come to SSD in RAID 0. (As if you don't already have an overwhelming stack of requests and ideas of your own for new articles.)

 

[ojas]

Where's Andrew Ku? Isn't this usually his stuff?

 

[ojas]

[citation][nom]Aegean BM[/nom]SSD RAID 0 is sexy. With HDD being so massive and cheap, I wonder how close HDD can come to SSD in RAID 0. (As if you don't already have an overwhelming stack of requests and ideas of your own for new articles.)[/citation]
They did compare 8 (WD?) HDDs to some Samsung SSDs (830 series, i think).
Let me see...
No, 470 series vs Fujitsu HDDs:
http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/ssd-raid-array-hard-drive,2775.html

 

[cryan]

[citation][nom]BigMack70[/nom]lol 32 threads of QD 32That setup is ridiculous... this article was a fun read[/citation]

That's equivalent to a total outstanding IO count of 1024. The only reason it didn't go up to 128 threads of 128 QD is because (1) it really muddies up the charts and (2) performance mostly maxes out at TC32/QD32.

[citation][nom]Aegean BM[/nom]SSD RAID 0 is sexy. With HDD being so massive and cheap, I wonder how close HDD can come to SSD in RAID 0. (As if you don't already have an overwhelming stack of requests and ideas of your own for new articles.)[/citation]

The truth is, even with the fastest 15K RPM SAS HDD burners, you still overcome the fundamental issues. When you RAID some HDDs together, you do get much better performance and responsiveness. It's just not anything like the jolt a single SSD can provide.

Regards,
Christopher Ryan

 

[yialanliu]

Very cool to see the performance but I would love to see a test of RAID 5/6 as a much more practical usage of multiple SSDs

 

[veroxious]

What I would like to know is what the performance difference would be if you stuck that 24 Intel SSD drives in a SAN scenario i.e swopping out 24 300GB 15K SAS drives in an entry level Dell MD3220 chassis with dual-socket sixteen core Intel powered host and 128GB of RAM.................

 

[veroxious]

Sorry forgot to add.........in a RAID 10/50 config

 

[ericjohn004]

You gotta love Tom's Hardware. What benchmarking site knows more that Tom's? When they write something, you know, they know what they are talking about.

If you don't like Tom's, then that just means you don't like the results, which means you don't like facts.

 

[veroxious]

Also, has anyone had any experience with something exotic like the Pure Storage array..... i.e is it any better than swopping out 24 disk 15K SAS drives with 24 SSD's in a traditional HBA equipped SAN?

 

[cats_Paw]

Yeah, Yeah, thats all nice and all, but can it run Crysis?

 

[WyomingKnott]

this gratuitous storage subsystem

Beautifully phrased.