16GB Intel M10 Optane M.2 SSD $15.50 New?

[mattlach]

the M10 is too slow and 16GB are difficult to use in terms of size.

I think they could be great for embedded style devices, especially ones that primarily do reads,not writes and use small amounts of data.

My OPNSense install would fit just fine on one of these, or better yet, a mirrored pair for good measure. Looks like the install only uses 8.9GB

My KODI Frontends are similar. Right now I have ARM devices (Odroid N2+) using CoreElec, and the install is ~250MB. These don't have m.2 support, but I may experiment with different devices in the future.

Heck, a basic standalone PiHole device running Armbian on an Odroid M1 would probably be a great application for this little drive.

They may not be the fastest, but random performance is still higher than traditional drives, and they beat the living daylights out of some crappy eMMC bullshit.

 

[mattlach]

Does anyone have something like a Crystal Disk Mark run on one of these as a standalone drive? Most testing out there is from around when they were launched and tests only the cache function.

There are a lot of numbers bandied about (like 900MB/s read, and 145MB/s write) but I have yet to see anything concrete.

 

[mattlach]

I know for a fact that these drives are bootable. But also sequential write of 145MB hurts, not that you buy these for sequential write. We used these as boot devices for maybe 2 years but they were generally not worth it.

That said, at 16GB, even at 145MB/s you are filling the entire drive in 113 seconds

 

[AlexGee]

I use a single 16GB Optane as boot drive for TrueNAS Scale - works well

 

[mattlach]

I use a single 16GB Optane as boot drive for TrueNAS Scale - works well

My OPNSense box currently runs as a VM on a Xeon E-2314 on a Proxmox host.

WireGuard has - however - proven to be surprisingly CPU intensive, so I am considering moving it bare metal on that same box to compensate. (why Wireguard wouldn't use AES when every CPU out there has AES-NI acceleration is beyond me)

If I do this, I think I am going to boot it off of a ZFS mirror of two 16GB Optane M10 drives. They seem almost perfect for this application.

 

[Sean Ho]

The actual encryption/decryption generally isn't the bottleneck on reasonably modern CPUs. WG can leverage AVX-512 and similar vector SIMD instructions, assuming your VM has passed through the appropriate CPU family. The CPU load you're seeing may be packet handling or interrupts; I'd direct efforts toward the various sysctl tuning options as well as hardware offload to your NIC.

 

[mattlach]

First off, my apologies, as this is way off topic for this thread, but I do value this information...

The actual encryption/decryption generally isn't the bottleneck on reasonably modern CPUs.

Well, I am pushing a significant amount of bandwidth over WireGuard:



So it is not unrealistic to think that I might be loading up the CPU.

WG can leverage AVX-512 and similar vector SIMD instructions, assuming your VM has passed through the appropriate CPU family.

I'm having it pass through the actual host type CPU.

Then when I saw the high load, I decided to experiment with some flags, but none of them seem to have helped.

cpu: host,flags=+md-clear;-pcid;-spec-ctrl;-ssbd;-ibpb;-virt-ssbd;-amd-ssbd;+amd-no-ssb;+pdpe1gb;-hv-tlbflush;+aes

The CPU load you're seeing may be packet handling or interrupts; I'd direct efforts toward the various sysctl tuning options as well as hardware offload to your NIC.

The system has an Intel i210 (WAN) and an Intel x520 (LAN). They aren't exactly the newest, but I supposed they must have some hardware offloading. I always assumed that was automatic once the driver module loaded though. They are passed through, so the guest should be seeing the actual hardware...

Is there anything I need to do to make them actually use the hardware offload?

Appreciate your input.

 

[mattlach]

So, my $37 10-pack of 16GB Optane M10's just arrived.

Sequentially they are as expected, which is a little pedestrian in 2024, but man that low queue depth 4k random performance is to die for.



Holy crap not bad for a $3.70 drive, no?

That's only like 3x faster than a Samsung 990 Pro.

One might ask, what are you going to do with a 16GB drive?

Well, they are great for little appliance boot drives, like Kodi boxes, TrueNAS Core, pfSense / OPNSense, etc. etc.

It's great to have a few of these kicking around...

 

[nexox]

Well, they are great for little appliance boot drives, like Kodi boxes, TrueNAS Core, pfSense / OPNSense, etc. etc.

I had an emmc device die in my old but perfectly functional Odroid C2 Kodi box this week, googled to see what I could find to replace it with more reliable storage, first result was you asking more or less the same thing on the libreelec forum a month ago with no great answers, decided to just buy an SD card plus a backup and just leave my M10s in their drawer.

 

[mattlach]

I had an emmc device die in my old but perfectly functional Odroid C2 Kodi box this week, googled to see what I could find to replace it with more reliable storage, first result was you asking more or less the same thing on the libreelec forum a month ago with no great answers, decided to just buy an SD card plus a backup and just leave my M10s in their drawer.

Yep,

I have three Odroid N2+ boxes running LibreElec and they work really well, but I find dealing with USB/SD/eMMC storage to be rather annoying. It doesn't make sense to me that so few ARM devices support real storage interfaces.

I picked up an Odroid M1 to play with because it was cheap and had an m.2 slot, but CPU performance was really underwhelming. I guess they are really good if you are doing something that requires an NPU, but that isn't really where my interests lie.

I'd consider picking up a few ODroid H4's for Kodi frontend duty. They are x86 devices and have a real m.2 port (they even offer adapters and PCIe bifurcation to allow it to operate in original x4 mode or two x2 or four x1 modes)

I just don't know where HDR capability stands on Intel graphics these days. This used to be a problem for Linux/Kodi, but that was a long time ago. Not sure about now. I kind of haven't kept up.

I mean, I know we are never going to get the proprietary "Dolby Vision" format which makes me wish it would just die (death to ALL proprietary formats) but at least If like everything else to work.

I have an Odroid H4 as a little desktop browsing machine and it is a great little board. The biggest complaint I have with it is the rather needlessly bulky case they sell for it. I wish someone would make a more compact case. I'd design one myself, but I am not exactly a 3D printing enthusiast...

 

[nexox]

They are x86 devices and have a real m.2 port (they even offer adapters and PCIe bifurkation to allow it to operate in original x4 mode or two x2 or four x1 modes)

Hmm x2x2 bifurcation, this is obviously a perfect platform to use one of those cheap D4800x drives at its full potential!

 

[mattlach]

Hmm x2x2 bifurcation, this is obviously a perfect platform to use one of those cheap D4800x drives at its full potential!

That's how I use mine but with an Optane 800p which is also 2 lane.

I use the 2 slot adapter in 2x2 bifurcation mode with the 800p in one slot, and a WLAN card in the other:



It makes for a great little cheap browser machine.

 

[steiNetti]

...
One might ask, what are you going to do with a 16GB drive?

Well, they are great for little appliance boot drives, like Kodi boxes, TrueNAS Core, pfSense / OPNSense, etc. etc.

...

I was thinking about doing the same for a few appliances at home, but then I realized: aren'y they rather power hungry? like ~5W even in idle? I know for people in the US this sonds negligible, but 5W is about 18€/~20$ where I live per year on 24/7 systems. Deploying a few of those add up to the extent of a throwaway noname SSD every 2 years, even at current prices..

 

[nexox]

I was thinking about doing the same for a few appliances at home, but then I realized: aren'y they rather power hungry? like ~5W even in idle? I know for people in the US this sonds negligible, but 5W is about 18€/~20$ where I live per year on 24/7 systems. Deploying a few of those add up to the extent of a throwaway noname SSD every 2 years, even at current prices..

The Optane M10 drives have a specified idle power consumption of 8mW and active power of 2W.

 

[BackupProphet]

I am seriously struggling with what I can use a 16GB optane for? Swap drive? With todays memory prices, that make sense.

 

[nilfisk_urd]

I use them as Bootdrive for TrueNAS

 

[i386]

I am seriously struggling with what I can use a 16GB optane for?

Specific applications like routers, mediaplayers etc.would be my guess...
All my servers nowadays use at least 64GByte or larger for boot drives (and 1TByte for windows desktops/workstations)

 

[BackupProphet]

I would just use a USB stick for that.