[OpenIndiana-discuss] [discuss] Re: [smartos-discuss] hardware specs for illumos storage/virtualization server

[Jim Klimov]

On 2012-11-19 06:01, Paul B. Henson wrote:
> Bummer :(, it would be nice to get one that does. I think the 320 series
> does, the 40G is only $90, but I think it has relatively crappy write
> performance and high write latency, so wouldn't be a very good zil. The
> 313 looks like it has pretty good performance, and not too pricy at $135
> for 24G, which is plenty big for a zil. The box is going to have dual
> power supplies on UPS's, and I plan to set it up for auto shutdown on
> power loss, so it's not *too* likely the slog is going to unexpectedly
> lose power while processing writes. I guess when you're on a budget you
> can't have everything <sigh>, I might need to settle for a non-powerfail
> protected ssd for zil...

The zfs-discuss list recently brought up the new Intel DC S3700
devices which are targeted at enterprise with high reliability
(10 rewrites daily for the 5 years of warranty), not bad IOPS
and capacitors. I think they should be on the market by early
2013, if not yet, starting around $250 for the smallest 100Gb
model. (I may be wrong about the date/price numbers).

If you're building a new rig and it takes time anyway, see if
these appeal to you. Then share your experience, if you do use
them - these devices to seem interesting ;)

Given how big they start, you might stick the rpool and zil and
l2arc (or at least some of those) onto the device and have moderate
fear of wearing them out.

Some links from that zfs-discuss thread:

http://newsroom.intel.com/community/intel_newsroom/blog/2012/11/05/intel-announces-intel-ssd-dc-s3700-series--next-generation-data-center-solid-state-drive-ssd

http://download.intel.com/newsroom/kits/ssd/pdfs/Intel_SSD_DC_S3700_Product_Specification.pdf



Random quotes from the marketing material I thought interesting:

 > The Intel SSD DC S3700 Series is a 6 gigabit-per-second (Gbps)
 > SATA drive with performance transfer rates of 500 megabyte per
 > second (MB/s) reads and 460 MB/s writes. It delivers up to 2x
 > read and 15x write performance over its previous generation
 > Intel® SSD 710 Series.

 > The Intel SSD DC S3700 feeds I/O-starved applications with 4KB
 > random read performance of up to 75,000 IOPS and 4KB write
 > performance of up to 36,000 IOPS. With typical sequential write
 > latency of 65 microseconds...

 > ...typical active power consumption 6 watts and idle 650 milliwatts

 > ...achieve 10 full drive writes per day over the 5-year life of
 > the drive. This is the equivalent of recording more than 186 years
 > of HD video over the life of the highest capacity 800GB drive.

 > The product comes in a 2.5-inch form factor for all capacities,
 > 100, 200, 400 and 800 gigabytes (GB), and in a 1.8-inch form
 > factor in 200GB and 400GB capacities.

 > General production availability is expected to begin by the end
 > of the year, with volume production in the first quarter of 2013.




Also,
 > Anandtech.com has a thorough review of it.
 > Performance is consistent (within 10-15% IOPS) across the lifetime
 > of the drive, has capacitors to flush RAM cache to disk, and doesn't
 > store user data in the cache. It's also cheaper per GB than the 710
 > it replaces.

My 2c,
//Jim Klimov