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Consumer based SSD's should be avoided. They are all a big lie when it comes to write performance. Some SSD's are hardly faster than regular hard drives for wri

by olavgg 10y ago

Consumer based SSD's should be avoided. They are all a big lie when it comes to write performance. Some SSD's are hardly faster than regular hard drives for write operations. https://blogs.technet.microsoft.com/filecab/2016/11/18/dont-do-it-consumer-ssd/ https://blogs.technet.microsoft.com/filecab/2016/11/18/dont-...

mrob 10y ago
So IOPS drops to HDD-like levels after several minutes of 4K mixed reads/writes with write-through. Why is that a reason to avoid consumer grade SSDs? The original article is talking about ThinkPads, which are highly unlikely to ever see this kind of workload. Endurance isn't an issue with the kind of writes you'll typically get on a laptop either. Consumer-grade SSDs are more than fast enough for even heavy consumer-grade workloads.
eloff 10y ago
And this is relevant to Optane because?
sgift 10y ago
The link talks about consumer SSDs and server workloads, makes a valid point regarding those two things (don't mix them), but doesn't say anything with regards to your comment. Also: Optane is a completely different technology. So, what's your point?
- olavgg 10y ago
  Server workloads is a bad excuse. Most browsers and a lot of applications use SQLite. Firefox and Chrome is known to write a lot more than they read. http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=article&item=samsung-960-evo&num=2 http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=article&item=samsung-9...
  - Dylan16807 10y ago
    That's still ten to twenty times faster than a hard drive, and browsers are not exactly slamming their history database. It's a trickle of writes, and a consumer SSD can handle it fine.
    - olavgg 10y ago
      You are absolutely right that a consumer SSD can handle it just fine, just like you can surf the web fine with 2GB ram and a single core CPU. But some people pay more bucks because they want better overall performance, and it sucks to pay for a top consumer SSD model that underperform the enterprise models by a huge margin for some basic tasks. Almost everyone who review consumer SSD, with a few rare exceptions, never benchmark sync write performance / latency. Those number matters a lot more than many believe. I've already seen to many people who use consumer drives with VMware, ZFS Intent log, SQL servers and so on, that gets frustrated because those applications are behaving a lot slower than what they expected and they feel really bad when I tell them that they have been fooled to believe that they bought "fast" SSD drives.
bogomipz 10y ago
Why should they be avoided? You should reread you link: >"Once its reserve runs out, the device runs slower until a break in the action lets it catch back up. With web browsing and other consumer scenarios. the chances of noticing this are small." Also note that in the last test they are doing "write through" and not using the disk controller cache at all. Something that would not at all be common to consumer level workloads. Additionally most consumers don't run benchmark utilities on their laptops throughout the day. While write amplification is well known. How about reads? There is no read cliff to fall off of. There is no such thing as seeks on an SSD or does that not count for anything in your assessment that they should be voided? I can't remember the last time I had I bought a laptop and there was an option to forgo NAND flash in favor of an HDD.
basch 10y ago
the author of this article refuses to state if they used a Samsung EVO or PRO (or something like the Crucial MX series.) Those TLC drives have SLC emulation and will slow down after a certain sustained write time. That is by design. If you dont want that characteristic, dont buy a TLC drive, stick to the PRO etc. >Second, oh my does the performance drop off. This is no longer an “SSD”: especially as it goes over the write cliff – which is still there – it’s merely a fast HDD, at about 220 IOPS. Writing NAND is slow! That is a pretty disingenuous conclusion if you dont specify whether the NAND is TLC or MLC.

by olavgg 10y ago

mrob 10y ago

So IOPS drops to HDD-like levels after several minutes of 4K mixed reads/writes with write-through. Why is that a reason to avoid consumer grade SSDs? The original article is talking about ThinkPads, which are highly unlikely to ever see this kind of workload. Endurance isn't an issue with the kind of writes you'll typically get on a laptop either. Consumer-grade SSDs are more than fast enough for even heavy consumer-grade workloads.

eloff 10y ago

And this is relevant to Optane because?

sgift 10y ago

The link talks about consumer SSDs and server workloads, makes a valid point regarding those two things (don't mix them), but doesn't say anything with regards to your comment. Also: Optane is a completely different technology. So, what's your point?

olavgg 10y ago
Server workloads is a bad excuse. Most browsers and a lot of applications use SQLite. Firefox and Chrome is known to write a lot more than they read. http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=article&item=samsung-960-evo&num=2 http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=article&item=samsung-9...
- Dylan16807 10y ago
  That's still ten to twenty times faster than a hard drive, and browsers are not exactly slamming their history database. It's a trickle of writes, and a consumer SSD can handle it fine.
  - olavgg 10y ago
    You are absolutely right that a consumer SSD can handle it just fine, just like you can surf the web fine with 2GB ram and a single core CPU. But some people pay more bucks because they want better overall performance, and it sucks to pay for a top consumer SSD model that underperform the enterprise models by a huge margin for some basic tasks. Almost everyone who review consumer SSD, with a few rare exceptions, never benchmark sync write performance / latency. Those number matters a lot more than many believe. I've already seen to many people who use consumer drives with VMware, ZFS Intent log, SQL servers and so on, that gets frustrated because those applications are behaving a lot slower than what they expected and they feel really bad when I tell them that they have been fooled to believe that they bought "fast" SSD drives.

bogomipz 10y ago

Why should they be avoided? You should reread you link: >"Once its reserve runs out, the device runs slower until a break in the action lets it catch back up. With web browsing and other consumer scenarios. the chances of noticing this are small." Also note that in the last test they are doing "write through" and not using the disk controller cache at all. Something that would not at all be common to consumer level workloads. Additionally most consumers don't run benchmark utilities on their laptops throughout the day. While write amplification is well known. How about reads? There is no read cliff to fall off of. There is no such thing as seeks on an SSD or does that not count for anything in your assessment that they should be voided? I can't remember the last time I had I bought a laptop and there was an option to forgo NAND flash in favor of an HDD.

basch 10y ago

the author of this article refuses to state if they used a Samsung EVO or PRO (or something like the Crucial MX series.) Those TLC drives have SLC emulation and will slow down after a certain sustained write time. That is by design. If you dont want that characteristic, dont buy a TLC drive, stick to the PRO etc. >Second, oh my does the performance drop off. This is no longer an “SSD”: especially as it goes over the write cliff – which is still there – it’s merely a fast HDD, at about 220 IOPS. Writing NAND is slow! That is a pretty disingenuous conclusion if you dont specify whether the NAND is TLC or MLC.