5 ms·

This seems doesn't seem right: Unfortunately, my laptop, and probably many other developers’ laptops, do not have an enterprise-grade SSD, or even the

This seems doesn't seem right: Unfortunately, my laptop, and probably many other developers’ laptops, do not have an enterprise-grade SSD, or even the option to install one. Enterprise grade SATA SSDs are fairly easy to obtain (Samsung PM893, Kingston DC600M). Enterprise M.2 SSDs are also a thing (Kingston DC1000B). If they're using a mac and are limited to external connectivity, then they could throw the above into a thunderbolt enclosure.

wtallis 2y ago
Even when there are enterprise SSDs that are mechanically and electrically compatible with the bays/slots in a laptop, they're often untenable due to the lack of idle power management features on enterprise SSDs (because sleeping when idle kills the latency metrics). Consider that the 480GB DC1000B is officially rated for 1.9W at idle and in practice I wasn't able to get it below 1.2W. Consumer SSDs with working power management would idle under 10mW.
- justinclift 2y ago
  Interesting, haven't seen mention of that aspect of enterprise ssds at all.
  - timschmidt 2y ago
    I usually have to tweak my home rackmount equipment over IPMI to set the fan settings to idle when temps are low instead of 24/7/365 jet engine mode which the local university datacenter seems to prefer. I imagine running the fans full blast all the time results in slightly more reliable performance and reliability, but I don't have the luxury of a soundproof HVAC controlled room to lock everything away in, so the lower noise at lower utilization matters to me. This trade-off definitely happens all over the place in enterprise gear.
    - justinclift 2y ago
      You've been through all the stuff like setting max device power for the NVMe drives and similar yeah? https://nvmexpress.org/resource/technology-power-features/ https://nvmexpress.org/resource/technology-power-features/
      - timschmidt 2y ago
        I just upgraded my main server to an https://www.supermicro.com/products/archive/motherboard/x9drw-3f https://www.supermicro.com/products/archive/motherboard/x9dr... with dual Xeon E5-2680v2s. $15 for 20c/40t and 256gb ECC from the local university surplus. Unfortunately, it's still a little too old to offer NVME. That doesn't matter too much to me, since it's connected via 6gbps SAS to several 24 bay NetApp disk shelves (also $15 ea!) full of disks. I have dealt with PCIe ASPM (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Active_State_Power_Management https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Active_State_Power_Management) which similarly trades off between performance, power consumption, and latency. I am not hugely concerned with power consumption as I have solar panels. But noise and excess heat matter to me. My whole stack is consuming around 650W currently. Wildly removed from the days I was running off a creatively overprovisioned OpenWRT wireless router using < 20W. But I'm happy to have the increased capacity for my use cases. Gigabit synchronous fiber to the home is a dangerous drug :)
        justsomehnguy 2y ago
        Just use PCI-E converter for NVMe. You wouldn't be able to boot from it, but it would work just fine.
        timschmidt 2y ago
        A good suggestion, but it's a 1U server with both available PCIe slots populated between the external SAS controller and a dual 10gbE CNA. I boot from SATA SSDs currently. Could upgrade to enterprise SAS SSDs, but haven't noticed a need for my current uses. The boot drive is rarely touched, as most data terminates at the NetApp disk shelves, which have been a far more reliable way to connect unholy amounts of storage to a machine than any of the consumer direct attached storage options I've tried in the past. There's a mix of SSDs and spinning rust in the disk shelves - SSDs for web server stuff and spinning rust for low cost bulk storage.
- kjkjadksj 2y ago
  Thats hardly untenable. Most computers draw a lot more watts where you wouldn't miss 1.2W imo. Even these "low watt" computers are drawing like 5-7 watts at idle and once you do anything on them its a lot more than that.
  - wtallis 2y ago
    You wouldn't miss the 1.2-1.9W on a gaming laptop with a discrete GPU. But for more mainstream systems with just integrated graphics, 5W is on the high end for idle power and even Intel's latest mid-range laptop parts can get down to about 3W if you don't have Windows doing dumb shit in the background constantly. Also, on modern laptops you can't trust that components will be powered off when you close the lid, because Microsoft and Intel have been at war with ACPI S3 suspend for years now. So that 1.2W could easily be the minimum power draw of the SSD any time you haven't hibernated or shut down the system.
    - kjkjadksj 2y ago
      You got a source for the 3w? Is this for the cpu or measured at the wall? Seems low. I believe intel n100 can get to 7w but only after heavy tweaking of c states and only with some mobo. A lot of users more in practice from my forum searching on this cpu last year when i almost bought it. Macbook can go down to 5w but again thats idle with nothing running. I don’t think many people leave a laptop computer idling like they might their workstation.
      - ColonelPhantom 2y ago
        My laptop (a Dell Latitude 5490, i5-8350u) with the screen backlight off and at idle goes down to 2.5w power consumption according to the battery statistics. An SSD idling at 1.9w would nearly double it!
      - kldx 2y ago
        Trusting the Thinkpad spec sheet numbers, an AMD T14s lasts >15hrs in one of the benchmarks on a 57Wh battery. That's less than 4W. Perhaps on Linux and with some tuning, it seems plausible to get to 3W?
otterley 2y ago
It's also a strange comment: Enterprise DBs are usually run on enterprise-grade hardware in production. To be sure, you can test them on consumer-grade hardware, but if most folks are going to run this stuff in production using enterprise-grade SSDs, the software should be optimized for that hardware. Mechanical sympathy is an important software engineering practice.

wtallis 2y ago

Even when there are enterprise SSDs that are mechanically and electrically compatible with the bays/slots in a laptop, they're often untenable due to the lack of idle power management features on enterprise SSDs (because sleeping when idle kills the latency metrics). Consider that the 480GB DC1000B is officially rated for 1.9W at idle and in practice I wasn't able to get it below 1.2W. Consumer SSDs with working power management would idle under 10mW.

justinclift 2y ago
Interesting, haven't seen mention of that aspect of enterprise ssds at all.
- timschmidt 2y ago
  I usually have to tweak my home rackmount equipment over IPMI to set the fan settings to idle when temps are low instead of 24/7/365 jet engine mode which the local university datacenter seems to prefer. I imagine running the fans full blast all the time results in slightly more reliable performance and reliability, but I don't have the luxury of a soundproof HVAC controlled room to lock everything away in, so the lower noise at lower utilization matters to me. This trade-off definitely happens all over the place in enterprise gear.
  - justinclift 2y ago
    You've been through all the stuff like setting max device power for the NVMe drives and similar yeah? https://nvmexpress.org/resource/technology-power-features/ https://nvmexpress.org/resource/technology-power-features/
    - timschmidt 2y ago
      I just upgraded my main server to an https://www.supermicro.com/products/archive/motherboard/x9drw-3f https://www.supermicro.com/products/archive/motherboard/x9dr... with dual Xeon E5-2680v2s. $15 for 20c/40t and 256gb ECC from the local university surplus. Unfortunately, it's still a little too old to offer NVME. That doesn't matter too much to me, since it's connected via 6gbps SAS to several 24 bay NetApp disk shelves (also $15 ea!) full of disks. I have dealt with PCIe ASPM (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Active_State_Power_Management https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Active_State_Power_Management) which similarly trades off between performance, power consumption, and latency. I am not hugely concerned with power consumption as I have solar panels. But noise and excess heat matter to me. My whole stack is consuming around 650W currently. Wildly removed from the days I was running off a creatively overprovisioned OpenWRT wireless router using < 20W. But I'm happy to have the increased capacity for my use cases. Gigabit synchronous fiber to the home is a dangerous drug :)
      - justsomehnguy 2y ago
        Just use PCI-E converter for NVMe. You wouldn't be able to boot from it, but it would work just fine.
        timschmidt 2y ago
        A good suggestion, but it's a 1U server with both available PCIe slots populated between the external SAS controller and a dual 10gbE CNA. I boot from SATA SSDs currently. Could upgrade to enterprise SAS SSDs, but haven't noticed a need for my current uses. The boot drive is rarely touched, as most data terminates at the NetApp disk shelves, which have been a far more reliable way to connect unholy amounts of storage to a machine than any of the consumer direct attached storage options I've tried in the past. There's a mix of SSDs and spinning rust in the disk shelves - SSDs for web server stuff and spinning rust for low cost bulk storage.
kjkjadksj 2y ago
Thats hardly untenable. Most computers draw a lot more watts where you wouldn't miss 1.2W imo. Even these "low watt" computers are drawing like 5-7 watts at idle and once you do anything on them its a lot more than that.
- wtallis 2y ago
  You wouldn't miss the 1.2-1.9W on a gaming laptop with a discrete GPU. But for more mainstream systems with just integrated graphics, 5W is on the high end for idle power and even Intel's latest mid-range laptop parts can get down to about 3W if you don't have Windows doing dumb shit in the background constantly. Also, on modern laptops you can't trust that components will be powered off when you close the lid, because Microsoft and Intel have been at war with ACPI S3 suspend for years now. So that 1.2W could easily be the minimum power draw of the SSD any time you haven't hibernated or shut down the system.
  - kjkjadksj 2y ago
    You got a source for the 3w? Is this for the cpu or measured at the wall? Seems low. I believe intel n100 can get to 7w but only after heavy tweaking of c states and only with some mobo. A lot of users more in practice from my forum searching on this cpu last year when i almost bought it. Macbook can go down to 5w but again thats idle with nothing running. I don’t think many people leave a laptop computer idling like they might their workstation.
    - ColonelPhantom 2y ago
      My laptop (a Dell Latitude 5490, i5-8350u) with the screen backlight off and at idle goes down to 2.5w power consumption according to the battery statistics. An SSD idling at 1.9w would nearly double it!
    - kldx 2y ago
      Trusting the Thinkpad spec sheet numbers, an AMD T14s lasts >15hrs in one of the benchmarks on a 57Wh battery. That's less than 4W. Perhaps on Linux and with some tuning, it seems plausible to get to 3W?

otterley 2y ago

It's also a strange comment: Enterprise DBs are usually run on enterprise-grade hardware in production. To be sure, you can test them on consumer-grade hardware, but if most folks are going to run this stuff in production using enterprise-grade SSDs, the software should be optimized for that hardware. Mechanical sympathy is an important software engineering practice.