Intel SSD Expected Lifetime And Gross Data Throughput Capabilities

While working on the previous post on Intel SSDs configured in the Intel Modular Server SAN, the twelfth slide in the IMS IDF2009 presentation was a real eye opener:

Note the numbers for the amount of data that can be written to the X25-E series drives as well as the two X25-M series drives!

• X25-E Series
• 3 Years of random writes
• 1-2 Petabytes of data volume
• X25-M Series in a Client setting
• 5 Years of random writes
• 35 Terabytes of data volume
• X25-M Series in a Datacenter setting
• 3 Years of random writes
• 7.5-15 Terabytes of data volume respectively

Those numbers give us a view of Intel’s expected lifetime for their Solid-State Drives in terms of the total volume of data to be written to them.

On initial view, the numbers seem relatively small volume wise. But, given the fact that we deal with some substantial amounts of static data both on servers and workstations we need to be mindful of the actual volume of data written to the disk over its expected lifetime.

Once we have a server OS and whatever applications installed on the disks, we are probably going to fall fairly far below the 20GB/day listed for the Intel X25-M series drives in a Client setting for example.

Intel Source:

• IDF2009 STOS004- Unleash Ultimate Virtualization Performance- Intel® Modular Server with Intel®

Philip Elder
MPECS Inc.
Microsoft Small Business Specialists
Co-Author: SBS 2008 Blueprint Book

*Our original iMac was stolen (previous blog post). We now have a new MacBook Pro courtesy of Vlad Mazek, owner of OWN.

Windows Live Writer

Intel Modular Server and Intel Solid-State Drive Performance IDF2009 Presentation

The 2009 Intel Developer Forum presentations are all available online here:

• IDF2009 Session Presentations with Audio

Of particular interest to us is the presentation on configuring Intel X25-M or X25-E Solid-State Drives with the 2.5” drive MFSYS25 series Intel Modular Server.

• IDF2009 STOS004: Unleash Ultimate Virtualization Performance: Intel® Modular Server with Intel® X25-E Solid-State Drives

This particular presentation runs about an hour is chock full of good information comparing the performance characteristics of traditional spindle based SAS drives and Intel’s Solid-State Drives.

There are some pretty good explanations of the various features and abilities of the Intel Modular Server too.

A point in the session that we have focused on here has to do with the actual I/O performance (IOPs) of the onboard SAN storage in the IMS (MFSYS25) with either SAS or SSD drives installed:

Note that when it comes to actual disk performance, the read and write throughput (MB/Sec) numbers are important, but those numbers become a moot point if the hard drive’s IOPs capabilities are relatively low.

IOPs (Wikipedia), or the number of Input/Output Operations Per Second a drive is capable of can make or break a server setup whether it is serving a very busy database or a series of IMS SAN located VHDs for VMs running in a cluster.

Even the largest RAID 10 array can perform quite poorly if the drives running in that RAID array have a relatively low IOPs capability.

Based on our own experiences with the Intel X25-M series Solid-State Drives, the above SSD performance slide is quite realistic considering that the X25-E series drives have an even higher IOPs capability than the X25-M drives.

The Solid-State Drives do indeed trump the traditional spindle based drives, even with a spindle rotational speed of 15,000 RPM, by huge margins.

So, our storage configurations need to be planned based on what each server node will be doing or storage sharing with the other nodes.

A blog post will follow to develop our thoughts on IMS storage options.

Philip Elder
MPECS Inc.
Microsoft Small Business Specialists
Co-Author: SBS 2008 Blueprint Book

*Our original iMac was stolen (previous blog post). We now have a new MacBook Pro courtesy of Vlad Mazek, owner of OWN.

Windows Live Writer

Intel X25-E SATA Solid-State Drive - Extreme Performance

Lately, solid-state drives (SSDs) have been getting some headlines.

So far, as far as third party gossip goes, we have heard both good and bad about them.

The big question for us when it comes to laptops is: Power consumption. Do the drives have a reduced power consumption requirement over standard spindle based drives? The bits and pieces we have come across have been on both sides of the fence.

No matter what the power consumption is though, this little point sure was an eye popper:

Intel SSD: Up to 250MB/s sequential read, up to 170MB/s sequential write

Wow ... wow ... wow! 8-O

Capacities are not there yet ... but they are coming up. And when they do, say bubbye to spindle based storage as a mainstream way of keeping data on the local machine.

There may still be a need for spindles in specialty applications, but there is absolutely no doubt that SSD is the future of local machine data storage.

Now, to get a set of eight 64GB Intel X25-E Extreme SATA Solid-State Drives for an absolutely killer RAID 0+1 array that would totally saturate the PCI-E bus man! :D

Just a little geeking out here ...

Links:

• The spec sheet is here: Intel X25-E SATA Solid State Drive (PDF direct link).
• Product brief here: Intel X25-E Extreme SATA Solid-State Drives Product Brief (PDF direct link).

Philip Elder
MPECS Inc.
Microsoft Small Business Specialists

*All Mac on SBS posts are posted on our in-house iMac via the Safari Web browser.