4 ms·

Am a little bit surprised Google hasn't incorporated SSD more.

by herf 15y ago

arkitaip 15y ago
Too expensive, too prone to failure http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/2011/05/the-hot-crazy-solid-state-drive-scale.html http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/2011/05/the-hot-crazy-solid...
- wmf 15y ago
  SSDs are actually cheaper per IOPS. Considering that everything we knew about hard disk reliability was shown to be wrong (by Google), I wouldn't be surprised if the same holds for SSDs.
  - sliverstorm 15y ago
    It's hard to see SSD's being a clear win on the surface. It would be very interesting though to see if the cost begins to change when you consider power savings (much smaller than hoped, but they do exist), figure out how much they'd save on HVAC in the datacenters, etc.
    - wmf 15y ago
      Having worked on power-aware hybrid storage for the last two years, the power savings per GB is pretty much zero; there is significant W/IOPS savings but that still doesn't pay for the capital cost. Performance is really the reason to use SSDs.
      - sliverstorm 15y ago
        per GB is an excellent point, I had not considered that.
- chrisbolt 15y ago
  Having installed almost 200 Intel SSDs into servers with 0 failures, I doubt his anecdotal evidence. Also compare with Intel's reported annual failure rates: http://www.anandtech.com/show/4244/intel-ssd-320-review http://www.anandtech.com/show/4244/intel-ssd-320-review and a french retailer: http://www.anandtech.com/show/4202/the-intel-ssd-510-review/3 http://www.anandtech.com/show/4202/the-intel-ssd-510-review/...
rxin 15y ago
For lots of applications, the workloads are either memory only or large sequential IOs. SSDs matter less in both situations.
clarkbox 15y ago
think commodity... have ssd's reached the commodity level yet? from a commodity stand point, i think it would be far more likely that google would use an array of SD cards per node. SSDs are really just an array of SD cards anyway, with a pile of hype and marketing piled on. you would still get most benefits of an SSD. power usage (esp at idle) might even be less than an ssd. google could develop their own wear leveling algorithms, and the rest of the stuff that an SSD controller provides for the internal flash. replacement costs could be less as well over time.
- ajtaylor 15y ago
  I was at a linux user group meeting recently where a talk was given by a Google sysadmin where he talked about hard drive reliability. Someone asked him about SSDs to which he replied that he couldn't talk about it. My take is that they are definitely trying out SSDs, but either 1) found SSDs provide a huge competitive benefit and don't want to publicly share that knowledge or 2) they simply don't have enough data yet. I'm leaning towards #1.
Locke1689 15y ago
Where did you get the impression that Google hasn't incorporated SSDs?

Am a little bit surprised Google hasn't incorporated SSD more.

by herf 15y ago

Am a little bit surprised Google hasn't incorporated SSD more.

Too expensive, too prone to failure http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/2011/05/the-hot-crazy-solid-state-drive-scale.html http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/2011/05/the-hot-crazy-solid...

wmf 15y ago
SSDs are actually cheaper per IOPS. Considering that everything we knew about hard disk reliability was shown to be wrong (by Google), I wouldn't be surprised if the same holds for SSDs.
- sliverstorm 15y ago
  It's hard to see SSD's being a clear win on the surface. It would be very interesting though to see if the cost begins to change when you consider power savings (much smaller than hoped, but they do exist), figure out how much they'd save on HVAC in the datacenters, etc.
  - wmf 15y ago
    Having worked on power-aware hybrid storage for the last two years, the power savings per GB is pretty much zero; there is significant W/IOPS savings but that still doesn't pay for the capital cost. Performance is really the reason to use SSDs.
    - sliverstorm 15y ago
      per GB is an excellent point, I had not considered that.
chrisbolt 15y ago
Having installed almost 200 Intel SSDs into servers with 0 failures, I doubt his anecdotal evidence. Also compare with Intel's reported annual failure rates: http://www.anandtech.com/show/4244/intel-ssd-320-review http://www.anandtech.com/show/4244/intel-ssd-320-review and a french retailer: http://www.anandtech.com/show/4202/the-intel-ssd-510-review/3 http://www.anandtech.com/show/4202/the-intel-ssd-510-review/...

rxin 15y ago

For lots of applications, the workloads are either memory only or large sequential IOs. SSDs matter less in both situations.

clarkbox 15y ago

think commodity... have ssd's reached the commodity level yet? from a commodity stand point, i think it would be far more likely that google would use an array of SD cards per node. SSDs are really just an array of SD cards anyway, with a pile of hype and marketing piled on. you would still get most benefits of an SSD. power usage (esp at idle) might even be less than an ssd. google could develop their own wear leveling algorithms, and the rest of the stuff that an SSD controller provides for the internal flash. replacement costs could be less as well over time.

ajtaylor 15y ago
I was at a linux user group meeting recently where a talk was given by a Google sysadmin where he talked about hard drive reliability. Someone asked him about SSDs to which he replied that he couldn't talk about it. My take is that they are definitely trying out SSDs, but either 1) found SSDs provide a huge competitive benefit and don't want to publicly share that knowledge or 2) they simply don't have enough data yet. I'm leaning towards #1.

Locke1689 15y ago

Where did you get the impression that Google hasn't incorporated SSDs?