Anyone tried STEC Drives?

[Patrick]

I have been watching/ toying with the idea of getting a STEC Zeus drive like this 50GB MACH8 IOPS model: STEC MACH8IOPS SSD 50GB M8ISB2 50UC 3PAR MACH8 Iops Enterprise Solid State Drive | eBay

or a 200GB Zeus IOPS like this: STEC Z16IZF2D 200UCT Zeusiops SLC 2 5" SAS 600 Solid State Drive | eBay

Just wondering if anyone has tried and if so any thoughts. I know these are more the types of drives found in higher-end NAS/ SAN systems. Any major gotchas with self-building using these?

 

[TeeJayHoward]

Never heard of them before, so I did some searching...

Read: 90MB/s
Write: 90MB/s

Read: up to 4,000 IOPS
Write: up to 400 IOPS

WTF? First-gen consumer drives were faster than this. Hell, I bet most modern hard drives are faster. What are these used for? Is there some sort of amazing stat I'm missing?

(edit: Oh, that was just for the 50 gig drive. The Zeus one is about on par with a modern SSD.)

 

[Salami]

Nice drives and this would be a good deal if you knew the drives were lightly used.

 

[TeeJayHoward]

So what am I missing about these drives? Used, they're twice the price of a new consumer drive. The specs are only on-par with modern high-end SSDs. Assuming that they last twice as long as a modern consumer drive, I still wouldn't consider them to be a remotely good purchase - It doesn't matter to me if a drive lasts 20 years instead of 10, because it will be replaced in 5 anyway.

 

[nitrobass24]

I haven't had the pleasure for playing with any SAS SSDs yet. I know that BlueFox on H has a few in his systems. Might want to shoot him a PM.

 

[Mike]

So what am I missing about these drives? Used, they're twice the price of a new consumer drive. The specs are only on-par with modern high-end SSDs. Assuming that they last twice as long as a modern consumer drive, I still wouldn't consider them to be a remotely good purchase - It doesn't matter to me if a drive lasts 20 years instead of 10, because it will be replaced in 5 anyway.

Ya running yer databases on vertex 2's huh

 

[TeeJayHoward]

Ya running yer databases on vertex 2's huh

840 Pro, actually. Granted, I may not have the massive writes/day of some place like [H], but I still fully expect the SSD to last me 10 years+. Given that modern MLC SSDs can write 6+PB (XtremeSystems test), I can't really see the advantage to paying twice as much for less capacity, less speed (even if it is a minor drop in IOPS), and, from their web site, less resiliency (1.1PB). Plus, it's used, even at that price!

 

[wyluliraven]

I have not had the chance to use any SAS SSD, however I am not impressed in the least with these. Not at all.

 

[RimBlock]

I have been watching/ toying with the idea of getting a STEC Zeus drive like this 50GB MACH8 IOPS model: STEC MACH8IOPS SSD 50GB M8ISB2 50UC 3PAR MACH8 Iops Enterprise Solid State Drive | eBay

or a 200GB Zeus IOPS like this: STEC Z16IZF2D 200UCT Zeusiops SLC 2 5" SAS 600 Solid State Drive | eBay

Just wondering if anyone has tried and if so any thoughts. I know these are more the types of drives found in higher-end NAS/ SAN systems. Any major gotchas with self-building using these?

I was looking at one of the 50GB drives as pdneiman on EBay (buying a C6100 Infiniband mez card and C6100 from him) has a few. Hi IPOS but very slow.

The Zeus looks a lot more interesting at SLC for approx US$500 (OBO) but I guess it depends on how much someone wants a used SCL drive. The 840 Samsung 500GBs are selling for US$300 new at the moment which is hard to beat. Format to 300GB and it give 200GB spare unprovisioned space for almost half the price. Would be interesting to see which one performs better and lasts longer.

RB

 

[b0bb]

I have a couple of the 100G MACH16 IOPS

SATA2/3Mbps and not all that fast (Sequential read is 124MBps, write is 166 MBps), reliability and power protection is what I got them for, use them as ZILs and cache drives on Solaris 11.

Is there a way to upload jpgs to add to the post? I have AS-SSD benchmark captures.

 

[TheBay]

B0bb,

I think you will have to use something like photobucket or host the image yourself as I don't think this site allows any attachments.

I have also been looking at these STEC drives, SLC based versions. I can get them reasonably cheap from a supplier, ~100gb capacities and either 2.5" or mPCIe format, I want a pair or 4 for an ESXi datastore, it's either that or Samsung 830 or 840pro.

I already use ATP eUSB (Sit on motherboard headers)SLC SSD's for the ESXi installation, I highly rate these and will put a post up soon.