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Hopefully we will start to see some other providers offer SSD-backed storage since Amazon does it now. It would be nice if they offered it on some smaller insta

Hopefully we will start to see some other providers offer SSD-backed storage since Amazon does it now. It would be nice if they offered it on some smaller instances too though.

thegyppo 14y ago
Storm on Demand have done SSD storage for a while now, pretty solid IOPS numbers too. I'll run a benchmark comparison tonight.
- thegyppo 14y ago
  Ran some benchmarks, really insane IOPS on this plan. Pretty average CPU performance (they're using fairly old E5620's). http://blog.serverbear.com/post/27553311076/hi1-4xlarge-benchmarks http://blog.serverbear.com/post/27553311076/hi1-4xlarge-benc...
  - signifiers 14y ago
    I just ran the numbers on the new EC2 instance, and I'm pretty skeptical about the benchmarks above. I'm not sure that, for example, a half second of dd /dev/zero really tells us much. When interpreting any benchmarks on EC2, it's important to understand that there is a 5-10% read/write performance hit on first use because AWS uses lazy block wipes between customer instance launches. See http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IedaYaKsb-4#t=29m49s http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IedaYaKsb-4#t=29m49s (should pre-cue, if not, skip to 29:49). This is referenced in the docs, but it's easy to miss: http://docs.amazonwebservices.com/AWSEC2/latest/UserGuide/InstanceStorage.html?r=409#disk-performance http://docs.amazonwebservices.com/AWSEC2/latest/UserGuide/In...) So here you go, for hi1.4xlarge: * Summary for the impatient - After initialization (i.e., second-write), quasi-realistic I/O on the new SSD EC2 instances sustains writes @ 420 MB/sec and reads @ 6 GB/sec. The entire 8.6GB / filesystem copied over to SSD in 21 seconds. Not bad. * # df -h Filesystem Size Used Avail Use% Mounted on /dev/sda1 8.0G 1.1G 6.9G 14% / tmpfs 30G 0 30G 0% /dev/shm /dev/xvdf 1023G 16G 957G 2% /media/ephemeral0 (Note: /dev/xvdf and /dev/xvdg are just soft links to /dev/sdf and /dev/sdg respectively) Crude stats on first-use: # hdparm -tT /dev/xvdf /dev/xvdf: Timing cached reads: 14788 MB in 1.99 seconds = 7446.69 MB/sec Timing buffered disk reads: 1066 MB in 3.00 seconds = 355.04 MB/sec Wipe the device: dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/xvdf bs=1M& pid=$! while true; do kill -USR1 $pid; sleep 4; done; [...] dd: writing `/dev/xvdf': No space left on device 1048567+17 records in 1048566+17 records out 1099511627776 bytes (1.1 TB) copied, 1955.42 s, 562 MB/s Stats after zero-wipe (dd /dev/zero) to device: hdparm -tT /dev/xvdf /dev/xvdf: Timing cached reads: 13260 MB in 1.99 seconds = 6673.05 MB/sec Timing buffered disk reads: 1124 MB in 3.01 seconds = 374.02 MB/sec hdparm -tT /dev/xvdf /dev/xvdf: Timing cached reads: 11188 MB in 1.99 seconds = 5624.17 MB/sec Timing buffered disk reads: 1122 MB in 3.00 seconds = 373.99 MB/sec hdparm -tT /dev/xvdf /dev/xvdf: Timing cached reads: 12930 MB in 1.99 seconds = 6505.78 MB/sec Timing buffered disk reads: 1124 MB in 3.00 seconds = 374.15 MB/sec Confirming Effect Of Pre-wiped I/O: hdparm -tT /dev/xvdg Timing cached reads: 11796 MB in 1.99 seconds = 5931.68 MB/sec Timing buffered disk reads: 1038 MB in 3.00 seconds = 345.87 MB/sec hdparm -tT /dev/xvdg /dev/xvdg: Timing cached reads: 12658 MB in 1.99 seconds = 6367.41 MB/sec Timing buffered disk reads: 1050 MB in 3.00 seconds = 349.47 MB/sec hdparm -tT /dev/xvdg /dev/xvdg: Timing cached reads: 12856 MB in 1.99 seconds = 6468.39 MB/sec Timing buffered disk reads: 1066 MB in 3.00 seconds = 354.80 MB/sec Pre- Vs. Post-wipe performance: 373.6 MB/sec vs. 349.3 MB/sec (6-7% speed improvement) Somewhat more real-world numbers: dd if=/dev/sda1 of=/dev/xvdf bs=1M 8192+0 records in 8192+0 records out 8589934592 bytes (8.6 GB) copied, 19.7876 s, 434 MB/s dd if=/dev/sda1 of=/dev/xvdf bs=1M 8192+0 records in 8192+0 records out 8589934592 bytes (8.6 GB) copied, 20.0365 s, 429 MB/s dd if=/dev/sda1 of=/dev/xvdf bs=1M 8192+0 records in 8192+0 records out 8589934592 bytes (8.6 GB) copied, 21.4193 s, 401 MB/s *Edit: formatting
j-kidd 14y ago
Check out this long thread on WHT, started 2 months ago: http://www.webhostingtalk.com/showthread.php?t=1151090 http://www.webhostingtalk.com/showthread.php?t=1151090 From my limited testing, a 1 Node instance from GridVirt at $30/month can compile gcc-4.6.3 within 15 minutes (not exactly an IO-intensive example...)

Hopefully we will start to see some other providers offer SSD-backed storage since Amazon does it now. It would be nice if they offered it on some smaller instances too though.

thegyppo 14y ago

Storm on Demand have done SSD storage for a while now, pretty solid IOPS numbers too. I'll run a benchmark comparison tonight.

thegyppo 14y ago
Ran some benchmarks, really insane IOPS on this plan. Pretty average CPU performance (they're using fairly old E5620's). http://blog.serverbear.com/post/27553311076/hi1-4xlarge-benchmarks http://blog.serverbear.com/post/27553311076/hi1-4xlarge-benc...
- signifiers 14y ago
  I just ran the numbers on the new EC2 instance, and I'm pretty skeptical about the benchmarks above. I'm not sure that, for example, a half second of dd /dev/zero really tells us much. When interpreting any benchmarks on EC2, it's important to understand that there is a 5-10% read/write performance hit on first use because AWS uses lazy block wipes between customer instance launches. See http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IedaYaKsb-4#t=29m49s http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IedaYaKsb-4#t=29m49s (should pre-cue, if not, skip to 29:49). This is referenced in the docs, but it's easy to miss: http://docs.amazonwebservices.com/AWSEC2/latest/UserGuide/InstanceStorage.html?r=409#disk-performance http://docs.amazonwebservices.com/AWSEC2/latest/UserGuide/In...) So here you go, for hi1.4xlarge: * Summary for the impatient - After initialization (i.e., second-write), quasi-realistic I/O on the new SSD EC2 instances sustains writes @ 420 MB/sec and reads @ 6 GB/sec. The entire 8.6GB / filesystem copied over to SSD in 21 seconds. Not bad. * # df -h Filesystem Size Used Avail Use% Mounted on /dev/sda1 8.0G 1.1G 6.9G 14% / tmpfs 30G 0 30G 0% /dev/shm /dev/xvdf 1023G 16G 957G 2% /media/ephemeral0 (Note: /dev/xvdf and /dev/xvdg are just soft links to /dev/sdf and /dev/sdg respectively) Crude stats on first-use: # hdparm -tT /dev/xvdf /dev/xvdf: Timing cached reads: 14788 MB in 1.99 seconds = 7446.69 MB/sec Timing buffered disk reads: 1066 MB in 3.00 seconds = 355.04 MB/sec Wipe the device: dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/xvdf bs=1M& pid=$! while true; do kill -USR1 $pid; sleep 4; done; [...] dd: writing `/dev/xvdf': No space left on device 1048567+17 records in 1048566+17 records out 1099511627776 bytes (1.1 TB) copied, 1955.42 s, 562 MB/s Stats after zero-wipe (dd /dev/zero) to device: hdparm -tT /dev/xvdf /dev/xvdf: Timing cached reads: 13260 MB in 1.99 seconds = 6673.05 MB/sec Timing buffered disk reads: 1124 MB in 3.01 seconds = 374.02 MB/sec hdparm -tT /dev/xvdf /dev/xvdf: Timing cached reads: 11188 MB in 1.99 seconds = 5624.17 MB/sec Timing buffered disk reads: 1122 MB in 3.00 seconds = 373.99 MB/sec hdparm -tT /dev/xvdf /dev/xvdf: Timing cached reads: 12930 MB in 1.99 seconds = 6505.78 MB/sec Timing buffered disk reads: 1124 MB in 3.00 seconds = 374.15 MB/sec Confirming Effect Of Pre-wiped I/O: hdparm -tT /dev/xvdg Timing cached reads: 11796 MB in 1.99 seconds = 5931.68 MB/sec Timing buffered disk reads: 1038 MB in 3.00 seconds = 345.87 MB/sec hdparm -tT /dev/xvdg /dev/xvdg: Timing cached reads: 12658 MB in 1.99 seconds = 6367.41 MB/sec Timing buffered disk reads: 1050 MB in 3.00 seconds = 349.47 MB/sec hdparm -tT /dev/xvdg /dev/xvdg: Timing cached reads: 12856 MB in 1.99 seconds = 6468.39 MB/sec Timing buffered disk reads: 1066 MB in 3.00 seconds = 354.80 MB/sec Pre- Vs. Post-wipe performance: 373.6 MB/sec vs. 349.3 MB/sec (6-7% speed improvement) Somewhat more real-world numbers: dd if=/dev/sda1 of=/dev/xvdf bs=1M 8192+0 records in 8192+0 records out 8589934592 bytes (8.6 GB) copied, 19.7876 s, 434 MB/s dd if=/dev/sda1 of=/dev/xvdf bs=1M 8192+0 records in 8192+0 records out 8589934592 bytes (8.6 GB) copied, 20.0365 s, 429 MB/s dd if=/dev/sda1 of=/dev/xvdf bs=1M 8192+0 records in 8192+0 records out 8589934592 bytes (8.6 GB) copied, 21.4193 s, 401 MB/s *Edit: formatting

j-kidd 14y ago

Check out this long thread on WHT, started 2 months ago: http://www.webhostingtalk.com/showthread.php?t=1151090 http://www.webhostingtalk.com/showthread.php?t=1151090 From my limited testing, a 1 Node instance from GridVirt at $30/month can compile gcc-4.6.3 within 15 minutes (not exactly an IO-intensive example...)