8 ms·

How DreamHost Builds Its Cloud: Selecting Hard Drives

85 points by kungfudoi 10y ago

hackuser 10y ago
I recently looked at SSDs for a project I'm working on. By far, the biggest performance impact is in using PCIe rather than SATA interfaces. (The performance boost also may rely on M.2 and/or NVMe; because I don't have a PCIe controller on the system I was working on, I didn't look into it further). An example: Samsung 850 Pro, reputedly one of the fastest SATA SSD drives (SATA 3, 2.5", AHCI): * Sequential read/write: 550/520 MB/s * 4K random read: 100K IOPS Samsung 950 Pro (PCIe 3.0 x4, M.2, NVMe): * Sequential read/write: 2,500/1,500 MB/s * 4K random read: 300K IOPS Source: http://www.anandtech.com/show/9702/samsung-950-pro-ssd-review-256gb-512gb http://www.anandtech.com/show/9702/samsung-950-pro-ssd-revie...
- WestCoastJustin 10y ago
  Yeah, you get a PCIe 3.0 SSD standard with the newer MacBook Pro's and it is awesome [1, 2]. I have totally forgotten about slow disk access. [1] http://www.apple.com/ca/macbook-pro/specs-retina/ http://www.apple.com/ca/macbook-pro/specs-retina/ [2] http://www.computerworld.com/article/2900330/apple-mac/holy-smoke-the-new-macbook-literally-is-twice-as-fast.html http://www.computerworld.com/article/2900330/apple-mac/holy-...
- nickff 10y ago
  I use the 850 Pro, and it is very fast, but has many issues with Windows 7 (which is what I have).
  - whoopdedo 10y ago
    Care to elaborate? I was about to pick one up but now you have me hesitating.
    - rincebrain 10y ago
      I'm unaware of negative interactions with Win7 and the 850 Pro, having used one in my Win7 desktop for over a year at this point. I can't immediately find anything but one-off reports online that don't line up with each other, either - maybe they're thinking of the 840 line?
      - nickff 10y ago
        Sorry, that was a typo, I have a 950 pro, and Windows 7 doesn't include an m.2 driver, which causes constant problems with booting and starting up after crashes. The 850 and 840 are both great drives.
- ilaksh 10y ago
  I asked about it on Digital Ocean User Voice https://digitalocean.uservoice.com/forums/136585-digitalocean/suggestions/16344982-provide-nvme-backed-storage https://digitalocean.uservoice.com/forums/136585-digitalocea... and also the Linode forum https://forum.linode.com/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=14058&hilit=NVMe https://forum.linode.com/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=14058&hilit=NVM... So far out of the whole internet, there was no response, except for one guys saying it was really silly, but he also said that SSDs were really silly. So as usual it seems I am wasting my breath trying to interact with people.
- otterley 10y ago
  The article acknowledges the availability of NVMe, but the price per unit of storage is far higher than for enterprise SATA SSDs. Cost matters, especially when you're buying thousands of units.
justjonathan 10y ago
This is only my personal experience, bu I am embarrassed to report that I have been in DreamHost customer for over 10 years for hosting some small and unimportant personal projects. I have been consistently disappointed with the level of their engineering and systems. Their systems are unreliable, their custom build ticketing system is atrocious. I would take any technical advice from them with a handful of salt.
- tomschlick 10y ago
  You'd be better off with a $5/mo digital ocean VM.
  - asimuvPR 10y ago
    Not at all. A VM is quite different to a shared host. There is more work and maintenance involved. For smaller projects its not worth it.
- arkitaip 10y ago
  Take a look at Webfaction. It's dev friendly hosting, great support, has lots of 1-click installer if you need them.
  - asimuvPR 10y ago
    +1 for webfaction. Their stuff just works and the staff is super helpful.
- charliepark 10y ago
  As a counterpoint (and this is only my personal experience), but I'm happy to report that I've been a DreamHost customer for over 10 years for hosting some small and unimportant personal projects. I've been really happy with everything. Not sure how our usage of their service differs (probably lots!), but I would hate for people to dismiss DreamHost without hearing about a positive experience with them.
  - 10y ago
hackuser 10y ago
There's something I don't understand about the enterprise vs consumer (or "client") SSD classification: According to the widely quoted JEDEC standard, JESD218A, [0] these are the date retention standards: Retention Use (power off): * Client: 30° C, 1 year * Enterprise: 40° C, 3 months It's not a typo, I've seen it in many places: It appears that the power-off data retention standard is only 3 months in enterprise drives (1 year in client drives isn't great either). Can anyone explain it? My only guess is that the "enterprise" classification refers to drives designed to churn data 24/7, not store it long-term. But I think many people understand the term 'enterprise' to mean much greater durability. I'd be very disappointed if I experienced dataloss from leaving any drive on a shelf for 3 months, much less an expensive enterprise drive. (Or maybe I misunderstand what's meant by Retention Use (power off)?) [0] Available here: https://www.jedec.org/standards-documents/results/jesd218b.01 https://www.jedec.org/standards-documents/results/jesd218b.0... and quoted here in the table here: http://www.kingston.com/us/ssd/enterprise/best_practices/enterprise_versus_client_ssd http://www.kingston.com/us/ssd/enterprise/best_practices/ent...
- digi_owl 10y ago
  Reading this i really wish that Sony was not so bloody proprietary with their multi-disc BD storage format.
- Kephael 10y ago
  The main difference is enterprise drives support time limited error recovery, this is a feature that allows for reliable use in conjunction with a hardware RAID controller.
  - Kephael 10y ago
    It seems I misread the question, TLER is what typically differentiates an enterprise hard disk from a consumer hard disk. The primary differentiator between an enterprise SSD and consumer SSD has typically been write endurance.
- LeifCarrotson 10y ago
  Retention is related to temperature. Consumer drives may last less than 3 months at 40 C, and enterprise drives may last more than 1 year at 30 C. Both may last even longer at 20 C.
arca_vorago 10y ago
I've been with drramhost for at least 10 years, but Im about to move everything because of their recent move from open source webmails to only atamail or whatever the new one is called. I spent a lot of time locking down my squirrelmail install, only to login one day and be greeting by a completely different client. Sure they had warnings, but none of those warnings clearly stated the forced move, I thought I could opt out. As for the rest of their service, Their actual server performance is decent, but their VPS offerings dont seem competitive these days, so Im strugling to find a reason to stay.
- rileymat2 10y ago
  I had their VPS, but they do not give you root access. (In fact removed root access from one I used for a few years, screwing a bunch of my stuff up). Kind of a strange definition of VPS they have now.
  - dchest 10y ago
    This is managed VPS, which is kinda convenient if you don't want to manage servers yourself. For the more "normal" unmanaged VPS with root access, there's DreamCompute. It's even cheaper than DigitalOcean — $4.50 for 512 MB. I recently switched https://iwl.me https://iwl.me to it, and it works well.
    - rileymat2 10y ago
      That is fine, but I was using it before those restrictions, which is annoying. Then I switched to Dream Compute and lost the email hosting for the domain.
      - dchest 10y ago
        Oh, I didn't know it was unrestricted before. (Re-read your comment) Yeah, not good of them to remove such a major feature if it was there before. Why did you lose email for domain? It seems like I still have this option for the domain on DreamCloud (although I also still use their shared hosting).
killbrad 10y ago
Forgive my ignorance, but how is this "cloud" instead of VPS?

85 points by kungfudoi 10y ago

I recently looked at SSDs for a project I'm working on. By far, the biggest performance impact is in using PCIe rather than SATA interfaces. (The performance boost also may rely on M.2 and/or NVMe; because I don't have a PCIe controller on the system I was working on, I didn't look into it further). An example: Samsung 850 Pro, reputedly one of the fastest SATA SSD drives (SATA 3, 2.5", AHCI): * Sequential read/write: 550/520 MB/s * 4K random read: 100K IOPS Samsung 950 Pro (PCIe 3.0 x4, M.2, NVMe): * Sequential read/write: 2,500/1,500 MB/s * 4K random read: 300K IOPS Source: http://www.anandtech.com/show/9702/samsung-950-pro-ssd-review-256gb-512gb http://www.anandtech.com/show/9702/samsung-950-pro-ssd-revie...

WestCoastJustin 10y ago
Yeah, you get a PCIe 3.0 SSD standard with the newer MacBook Pro's and it is awesome [1, 2]. I have totally forgotten about slow disk access. [1] http://www.apple.com/ca/macbook-pro/specs-retina/ http://www.apple.com/ca/macbook-pro/specs-retina/ [2] http://www.computerworld.com/article/2900330/apple-mac/holy-smoke-the-new-macbook-literally-is-twice-as-fast.html http://www.computerworld.com/article/2900330/apple-mac/holy-...
nickff 10y ago
I use the 850 Pro, and it is very fast, but has many issues with Windows 7 (which is what I have).
- whoopdedo 10y ago
  Care to elaborate? I was about to pick one up but now you have me hesitating.
  - rincebrain 10y ago
    I'm unaware of negative interactions with Win7 and the 850 Pro, having used one in my Win7 desktop for over a year at this point. I can't immediately find anything but one-off reports online that don't line up with each other, either - maybe they're thinking of the 840 line?
    - nickff 10y ago
      Sorry, that was a typo, I have a 950 pro, and Windows 7 doesn't include an m.2 driver, which causes constant problems with booting and starting up after crashes. The 850 and 840 are both great drives.
ilaksh 10y ago
I asked about it on Digital Ocean User Voice https://digitalocean.uservoice.com/forums/136585-digitalocean/suggestions/16344982-provide-nvme-backed-storage https://digitalocean.uservoice.com/forums/136585-digitalocea... and also the Linode forum https://forum.linode.com/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=14058&hilit=NVMe https://forum.linode.com/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=14058&hilit=NVM... So far out of the whole internet, there was no response, except for one guys saying it was really silly, but he also said that SSDs were really silly. So as usual it seems I am wasting my breath trying to interact with people.
otterley 10y ago
The article acknowledges the availability of NVMe, but the price per unit of storage is far higher than for enterprise SATA SSDs. Cost matters, especially when you're buying thousands of units.

justjonathan 10y ago

This is only my personal experience, bu I am embarrassed to report that I have been in DreamHost customer for over 10 years for hosting some small and unimportant personal projects. I have been consistently disappointed with the level of their engineering and systems. Their systems are unreliable, their custom build ticketing system is atrocious. I would take any technical advice from them with a handful of salt.

tomschlick 10y ago
You'd be better off with a $5/mo digital ocean VM.
- asimuvPR 10y ago
  Not at all. A VM is quite different to a shared host. There is more work and maintenance involved. For smaller projects its not worth it.
arkitaip 10y ago
Take a look at Webfaction. It's dev friendly hosting, great support, has lots of 1-click installer if you need them.
- asimuvPR 10y ago
  +1 for webfaction. Their stuff just works and the staff is super helpful.
charliepark 10y ago
As a counterpoint (and this is only my personal experience), but I'm happy to report that I've been a DreamHost customer for over 10 years for hosting some small and unimportant personal projects. I've been really happy with everything. Not sure how our usage of their service differs (probably lots!), but I would hate for people to dismiss DreamHost without hearing about a positive experience with them.
- 10y ago

hackuser 10y ago

There's something I don't understand about the enterprise vs consumer (or "client") SSD classification: According to the widely quoted JEDEC standard, JESD218A, [0] these are the date retention standards: Retention Use (power off): * Client: 30° C, 1 year * Enterprise: 40° C, 3 months It's not a typo, I've seen it in many places: It appears that the power-off data retention standard is only 3 months in enterprise drives (1 year in client drives isn't great either). Can anyone explain it? My only guess is that the "enterprise" classification refers to drives designed to churn data 24/7, not store it long-term. But I think many people understand the term 'enterprise' to mean much greater durability. I'd be very disappointed if I experienced dataloss from leaving any drive on a shelf for 3 months, much less an expensive enterprise drive. (Or maybe I misunderstand what's meant by Retention Use (power off)?) [0] Available here: https://www.jedec.org/standards-documents/results/jesd218b.01 https://www.jedec.org/standards-documents/results/jesd218b.0... and quoted here in the table here: http://www.kingston.com/us/ssd/enterprise/best_practices/enterprise_versus_client_ssd http://www.kingston.com/us/ssd/enterprise/best_practices/ent...

digi_owl 10y ago
Reading this i really wish that Sony was not so bloody proprietary with their multi-disc BD storage format.
Kephael 10y ago
The main difference is enterprise drives support time limited error recovery, this is a feature that allows for reliable use in conjunction with a hardware RAID controller.
- Kephael 10y ago
  It seems I misread the question, TLER is what typically differentiates an enterprise hard disk from a consumer hard disk. The primary differentiator between an enterprise SSD and consumer SSD has typically been write endurance.
LeifCarrotson 10y ago
Retention is related to temperature. Consumer drives may last less than 3 months at 40 C, and enterprise drives may last more than 1 year at 30 C. Both may last even longer at 20 C.

arca_vorago 10y ago

I've been with drramhost for at least 10 years, but Im about to move everything because of their recent move from open source webmails to only atamail or whatever the new one is called. I spent a lot of time locking down my squirrelmail install, only to login one day and be greeting by a completely different client. Sure they had warnings, but none of those warnings clearly stated the forced move, I thought I could opt out. As for the rest of their service, Their actual server performance is decent, but their VPS offerings dont seem competitive these days, so Im strugling to find a reason to stay.

rileymat2 10y ago
I had their VPS, but they do not give you root access. (In fact removed root access from one I used for a few years, screwing a bunch of my stuff up). Kind of a strange definition of VPS they have now.
- dchest 10y ago
  This is managed VPS, which is kinda convenient if you don't want to manage servers yourself. For the more "normal" unmanaged VPS with root access, there's DreamCompute. It's even cheaper than DigitalOcean — $4.50 for 512 MB. I recently switched https://iwl.me https://iwl.me to it, and it works well.
  - rileymat2 10y ago
    That is fine, but I was using it before those restrictions, which is annoying. Then I switched to Dream Compute and lost the email hosting for the domain.
    - dchest 10y ago
      Oh, I didn't know it was unrestricted before. (Re-read your comment) Yeah, not good of them to remove such a major feature if it was there before. Why did you lose email for domain? It seems like I still have this option for the domain on DreamCloud (although I also still use their shared hosting).

killbrad 10y ago

Forgive my ignorance, but how is this "cloud" instead of VPS?