Fusion-io ioDrive II - 1.2TB+ drives <0.50/GB

[Patrick]

Wow the price has been jacked up sadly. I will watch and wait on Ebay for the time being.

Does anyone know if it possible to use this drive as a boot device? Maybe on Linux?

Thanks!

Joseph

I would advise not using these as boot devices.

 

[Joseph Nunn]

I would advise not using these as boot devices.

Ok, but without color on that I don't learn anything, if you have a link with more detail I would gladly read it.

For myself I'm looking for a PCIe SSD for general use, including as a boot drive. Intel 750 would work I think, but I'm looking to Ebay something on the cheap if possible and these drives were attractive at first glance for that reason and their size.

 

[MiniKnight]

Ok, but without color on that I don't learn anything, if you have a link with more detail I would gladly read it.

For myself I'm looking for a PCIe SSD for general use, including as a boot drive. Intel 750 would work I think, but I'm looking to Ebay something on the cheap if possible and these drives were attractive at first glance for that reason and their size.

I can tell you that the reason I don't use Fusion-io cards we have as boot devices:
- Cost/ GB higher than SATA SSD - Intel 320 or S3500 is much cheaper per GB
- Lack of kernel driver support means it's way easier to install the OS then Fusion-io drives rather than trying to do both.
- Speed - you don't need PCIe SSD for boot
- Service - if you need to upgrade firmware for the drives it isn't like using a SATA driver
- Compatibility - even NVMe drives on some motherboards have issues booting from them. Avoid that hassle.

If you're running Linux, Solaris, VMware, Hyper-V Server 2Kr2: Intel S3500 80 GB,Internal, 2.5" (SSDSC2BB080G401) SSD is what you want for an OS drive.

 

[Joseph Nunn]

I can tell you that the reason I don't use Fusion-io cards we have as boot devices:
- Cost/ GB higher than SATA SSD - Intel 320 or S3500 is much cheaper per GB
- Lack of kernel driver support means it's way easier to install the OS then Fusion-io drives rather than trying to do both.
- Speed - you don't need PCIe SSD for boot
- Service - if you need to upgrade firmware for the drives it isn't like using a SATA driver
- Compatibility - even NVMe drives on some motherboards have issues booting from them. Avoid that hassle.

If you're running Linux, Solaris, VMware, Hyper-V Server 2Kr2: Intel S3500 80 GB,Internal, 2.5" (SSDSC2BB080G401) SSD is what you want for an OS drive.

Ok I can see the lack of kernel driver support being a problem on Linux, and definitely on Windows, I did the google dance there to learn a bit. However I generally disagree about saying things like "You don't need X", because really thats making a judgement call without all the facts, just suppositions.

I don't use my machine much as a server, except maybe when testing, but more of a personal HPC workstation for developing software projects, research and the like. So I think the usage model might be different from your own, where you have made the call that PCIe SSD is not needed.

I run a custom-rolled Funtoo distro, which is source-based, and hence do quite a bit of compiling of my own kernels and everything else, only a few binary-only vendor supplied drivers do I not build myself. I've already got an 80 gb ssd right now for a main drive and its just not big enough, or fast enough for me that is just the truth. The boot partition itself is small of course, but that isn't the only thing I need on the drive. Sources take space, and so does their compilation, some projects need over 16GB of working space by themselves and until my new gear gets here I just can't stuff it all into a ramdisk. And lets be honest, things are just more simple if everything is on the same drive, if I can find a bootable terabyte sized PCIe drive for cheap that can take a ton of writes, that is what I want for my main drive. I've raided hard drives for data, but thems slow and I don't want them to host the os.

I also game, but hey nobody's perfect