What consumer SSD for server loads and virtualization (~200$)

[Lapsio]

I'm looking for some SSD to my workstation. It's mostly used as home-purpose server (various daemons - ssh, ftp, nginx for web server, VNC etc. ...) and I'm using LOTS of virtualization especially various Windows version, for apps testing (I'm usually programming, C and webdev) as well as for few windows-only applications such as Adobe Suite.

Aaand that's my biggest problem. Host OS is Linux OpenSUSE with VirtualBox and VMWare Workstation 10 and virtualization performance is pretty awkward on both of them, especially startup performance, I have Win7 VM added to autostart, so complete OS boot up with this small VM and all apps takes ages. I mean really - it's like literally 2-3 minutes, when It's possible I'm just getting back home, pushing power button then starting to undress, go to toilet, drink something and usually even after all of that, PC is still booting. Also it's sometimes completely freezing when I'm performing some more serious storage operations both on host or VMs.

I thought about Plextor m6e 128gb because it's PCI-E SSD so i thought it'd be great for virtualization due to high iops and it's relatively cheap so it wouldn't be waste of money even is noticeably better products would be released soon. But from what I saw in benchmarks and tests it doesn't really perform THAT great. I mean usually it's nearly the same as Samsung 850 Pro 256gb which is a bit bigger and has 10 years warranty so seems to be more reliable. I doubt higher sequential read on m6e (which is like the only noticably better spec) could increase overall OS performance in my case but I'm not really sure. I should fit my most important VMs, SUSE and websites files on these 128 gb so space is not really an issue I'm concerned more about performance but if they'd perform nearly exactly the same then well... another 128gb could be nice addition

On the other hand I'm quite afraid if m/b (Sabertooth P67) will handle another SATA drive at its full performance. I already have software 3-bay RAID5 and 2 single drives so i have 5 HDDs already, + front-panel and DVD drive it gives 7 busy SATA ports. SSD would take last - 8th one.



Personally i really don't like Samsung, most of their hardware i've met in my life was crappy as hell, probably that's why I'm a bit skeptical to their SSDs but it's Pro series, so it shouldn't be crap am I right? And now i completely don't know what to do - get Plextor, get Samsung, wait another year with what i have, get some other SSD or ...? I wouldn't like to waste money

rest of hardware which may be important is i7-2600K and 16gb RAM (used as ramdisc, mounted under /tmp)

 

[geofelt]

All modern ssd's have essentially the same performance.

Larger ssd's will perform a bit better and last longer. 250gb is now at reasonable prices. even 500gb.

Just attach the ssd to a sata 3 port where you can get the full data transfer rate.
Hard drives are not impacted by sata 2.

I happen to like Samsung and intel.
They have full control over their parts.

 

[Lapsio]

Why bigger will last longer? At least from what I saw rather only 850 Pro offers sufficient performance in terms of random read / iops so not really all modern SSDs seem to perform similar

 

[geofelt]

Do not be much swayed by vendor synthetic SSD benchmarks.
They are done with apps that push the SSD to it's maximum using queue lengths of 30 or so.
Most desktop users will do one or two things at a time, so they will see queue lengths of one or two.
What really counts is the response times, particularly for small random I/O. That is what the os does mostly.
For that, the response times of current SSD's are remarkably similar. And quick. They will be 50X faster than a hard drive.
In sequential operations, they will be 2x faster than a hard drive, perhaps 3x if you have a sata3 interface.
Larger SSD's are preferable. They have more nand chips that can be accessed in parallel. Sort of an internal raid-0 if you will.
Also, a SSD will slow down as it approaches full. That is because it will have a harder time finding free nand blocks to do an update without a read/write operation. A ssd nand block has a limited lifetime of updates. Something like 10,000. The more free nand blocks you have the longer it will take for updates to exhaust them. In practice his is a moot point. A heavy desktop user will take 10 years to use up the typical ssd. It will be long obsolete by then.
The Samsung pro versions have better endurance because they have more nand blocks. Again, it does not matter much if they will last 15 years.

 

[Lapsio]

Well I'm not sure if my case classifies as normal user but I get the point

Also, a SSD will slow down as it approaches full. That is because it will have a harder time finding free nand blocks to do an update without a read/write operation. A ssd nand block has a limited lifetime of updates. Something like 10,000. The more free nand blocks you have the longer it will take for updates to exhaust them.

So if these SSDs perform quite similar, 50% free Samsung could actually perform better than 10% free Plextor?

So another question if I'd have these additional 128gb is it bad idea to create SWAP partition on SSD? I heard it can wear out SSD really quickly is that true?

 

[geofelt]

90% is about the point where a ssd slows down. Windows will display you capacity available in red at that point.
A telling warning.
A pcie based ssd may potentially have faster sequential read capability.
But, that is only if your motherboard has the pcie lanes that it can use for the slot.
And some pcie based ssd''s are not bootable, again depending on the motherboard.
I think it is a moot point because the performance of a ssd mostly gated to the random access response times. A statistic that is hard do come by.

Much of the "tweaks" for ssd's that you may hear come from the time when ssd's were more expensive and not as good.
They were intended to save space.
If you need performance use your ssd for that purpose.
If you ever should run out of updates, the ssd is still readable so you can clone it to a fresh ssd.
I have yet to hear of anybody reaching this point.
I would no try to dedicate any partition to a swap or page file.
If a pc has sufficient ram, it will not be used much anyway.

Windows will turn off defrag since it is useless on a ssd.