Hey all,
I'm in need of SSDs for many of my 1U servers, and I've been offered a very good number of Intel 520 series 240 GB, at a great price.
I know these SSDs are old but I keep hearing such great things about them, such as their longevity. The value for money also means that I can stock up a bit.
SSD technology is improving all the time and drives can and do fail. A Samsung 850 series 256 GB is probably just as good for longevity, surely faster (in theory), and will come with a warranty. An EVO is about 50% more expensive than a used Intel 520, and a Pro is almost twice the price. I wouldn't expect the speed difference to be very noticeable because they will be installed in good but older servers (based on Supermicro X9 series).
In my case, the overall picture is important: accepting that SSDs can and do fail; being prepared with a backup supply of replacement SSDs; and considering that my servers are X9's rather than the latest technology.
It's doubtful that I'll use mirrored RAID as each server will have two hot-swappable drive bays at its front. I'm thinking of a single SSD for the OS and any VMs, plus a single HDD for bulk storage (such as external volumes for the VMs). Instead of RAID, I may try to configure the nodes in active/active pairs (plus, perhaps, another machine on warm standby). Whenever anything fails, not just a disk, failover over should be automatic.
If a node drops out because a disk failed, the hot-swappable drive bays at the front of the chassis will be important because an engineer in a remote data centre can change a disk without unracking the whole chassis. I really don't want want any untrusted person opening up any of my servers.
Really, this is an educational project for me to learn about distributed computing, and hosting services that need resilience and high availability. In particular, the hardware I've been procuring makes it relatively affordable to build my own infrastructure.
I digress and want to draw our attention back to the topic of refurbished Intel 520 series SSDs. What do you think? Thanks!!
ullbeking
I'm in need of SSDs for many of my 1U servers, and I've been offered a very good number of Intel 520 series 240 GB, at a great price.
I know these SSDs are old but I keep hearing such great things about them, such as their longevity. The value for money also means that I can stock up a bit.
SSD technology is improving all the time and drives can and do fail. A Samsung 850 series 256 GB is probably just as good for longevity, surely faster (in theory), and will come with a warranty. An EVO is about 50% more expensive than a used Intel 520, and a Pro is almost twice the price. I wouldn't expect the speed difference to be very noticeable because they will be installed in good but older servers (based on Supermicro X9 series).
In my case, the overall picture is important: accepting that SSDs can and do fail; being prepared with a backup supply of replacement SSDs; and considering that my servers are X9's rather than the latest technology.
It's doubtful that I'll use mirrored RAID as each server will have two hot-swappable drive bays at its front. I'm thinking of a single SSD for the OS and any VMs, plus a single HDD for bulk storage (such as external volumes for the VMs). Instead of RAID, I may try to configure the nodes in active/active pairs (plus, perhaps, another machine on warm standby). Whenever anything fails, not just a disk, failover over should be automatic.
If a node drops out because a disk failed, the hot-swappable drive bays at the front of the chassis will be important because an engineer in a remote data centre can change a disk without unracking the whole chassis. I really don't want want any untrusted person opening up any of my servers.
Really, this is an educational project for me to learn about distributed computing, and hosting services that need resilience and high availability. In particular, the hardware I've been procuring makes it relatively affordable to build my own infrastructure.
I digress and want to draw our attention back to the topic of refurbished Intel 520 series SSDs. What do you think? Thanks!!
ullbeking