Can Servers Use Solid State Drives?

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  • anthonyparsons
    Senior Member
    • Mar 2005
    • 2597

    Can Servers Use Solid State Drives?

    I am curious from those server tech pers, can servers use SSD's or not? I wonder as doing tests on my home system from a 15k SCSI to an SSD, the response times are amazing to say the least, in that the startup alone is now around 3 seconds, total time... everything is instantaneous compared to waiting on a HDD to find, write, read, etc vs. solid state technology.

    I am wondering though whether whilst it is good for a home system, does it have a massive vulnerability in servers vs. conventional HDD's? Whilst I understand they don't do RAID, or maybe they do and I missed it, I wouldn't see why they would need such a thing because they are near instantaneous compared to a HDD. The only thing I can see from my limited scope is that it would require something different to mimic drives for backup purposes.

    Is there a catch to them for servers? Beyond cost!!!
  • Gumble
    Senior Member
    • Sep 2008
    • 352
    • 4.0.0

    #2
    That would be awesome yeah, but the costs would jump up all teh way...

    And you can raid with SSD as a normal drive, there is something with 1Gb or 1.5Gb can't remember exacly atm but was presented in the last year using a few drives with a self raid controler.


    Check this

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    • ManagerJosh
      Senior Member
      • Jun 2002
      • 9922

      #3
      Originally posted by anthonyparsons
      I am curious from those server tech pers, can servers use SSD's or not? I wonder as doing tests on my home system from a 15k SCSI to an SSD, the response times are amazing to say the least, in that the startup alone is now around 3 seconds, total time... everything is instantaneous compared to waiting on a HDD to find, write, read, etc vs. solid state technology.

      I am wondering though whether whilst it is good for a home system, does it have a massive vulnerability in servers vs. conventional HDD's? Whilst I understand they don't do RAID, or maybe they do and I missed it, I wouldn't see why they would need such a thing because they are near instantaneous compared to a HDD. The only thing I can see from my limited scope is that it would require something different to mimic drives for backup purposes.

      Is there a catch to them for servers? Beyond cost!!!
      Over at Steadfast, they're offering Solid State Drives for customers. Here was a blog entry I remembered reading long time ago.

      COLOHOUSE SERVICES COLOCATION Your data center location matters. Our focus is to provide the infrastructure that will give you the ability to allocate more resources toward your business needs. PRIVATE CLOUD We give our customers the flexibility to also incorporate owned equipment, hosted solutions, and elastic components to create the best-fitting environment MANAGED SERVICES Our […]
      ManagerJosh, Owner of 4 XenForo Licenses, 1 vBulletin Legacy License, 1 Internet Brands Suite License
      Director, WorldSims.org | Gaming Hosting Administrator, SimGames.net, Urban Online Entertainment

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      • Dean C
        Senior Member
        • Mar 2002
        • 4571
        • 3.5.x

        #4
        I can't see the benefit for a server of doing this as far as cost goes. Servers generally need more storage than home computers, in which case I think it's far more economical running a few standard drives in a nice raid with a damn good raid card
        Dean Clatworthy - Web Developer/Designer

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        • anthonyparsons
          Senior Member
          • Mar 2005
          • 2597

          #5
          Thank you all for that, a good learning curve for me. Much appreciated. I liked that read Josh, thank you. I held out personally using them when they first hit the market because they were too expensive, yet now the prices have decreased rapidly, the technology improved tremendously, the sizes are relatively cheap for the benefits, etc etc. When the drives are now rated for 50 year lifespans in a server environment, I think one has to be pretty happy with that. From my own computers performance, I was hoping that SSD would transform to the server in the same way... and from reading your link Josh, then doing some more searching, it seems very much the case.

          A SSD may not achieve much higher throughput (~200 MB/sec), but the throughput of a drive is never the real bottleneck in a server environment. On a standard SATA drive, the only time you will achieve the maximum throughput is on sequential reads or sequential writes, when the drive is reading a single large group of data. The issue is, on servers, you're going to be reading data from across the disks and doing both reading and writing operations. This is where the SSD serves a major advantage, as it will get you actual read/write latencies of ~0.1ms as opposed to ~12ms on 7200RPM SATA drives or ~6ms on 15k RPM SAS drives. This means the number of IO operations you can perform a second increases tremendously. As an example, in a standard database IO benchmark, the X25-E will perform ~5000 IO/sec while a 15k RPM SAS drive will max out at around 120 IO/sec. Not only are these drives faster, but they are significantly more reliable. As the drives store the data on flash memory modules instead of on physical platters there is no mechanical motion, as you would have in a standard hard drive. There is no risk of any mechanical failure, such as a platter getting physically damaged, of a motor going out, etc. In addition, the drives use less power, and thus create less heat, decreasing the risk of heat related issues all around.
          Were I specifically see the benefits from SSD is:
          This higher disk IO may prevent you from needing to get an additional server or needing to re-engineer your applications, saving you significant time and money.
          I have begun investigating this path for future use and its viability now, as I can see great potential from a little investment now, saving me a lot over the course of a year.

          I do agree Dean with the size aspect... I do notice as size increases from anything basic, so does the price dramatically at the moment. Hopefully by the time I am ready to switch over, this will hopefully have changed.

          Comment

          • anthonyparsons
            Senior Member
            • Mar 2005
            • 2597

            #6
            Reading through all these resources, you can now get the same high quality @ 256Gb and beyond at the same, and even cheaper prices... around the $700 mark per drive. A lot of the stuff was a year old, so finding more up to date results seemed to provide a lot of great development and price reductions on this avenue. More bang for your buck, so to speak.

            Thanks to those above, as its good to hear from server techs, as its never just as simple as what you read on some website, because everything has pro's and con's... people tend to list the pro's without the con's. I know these things must have more con's too them... or simply the price is the con aspect.

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