Intel 900P 280GB U.2 drives $229

Notice: Page may contain affiliate links for which we may earn a small commission through services like Amazon Affiliates or Skimlinks.

NablaSquaredG

Layer 1 Magician
Aug 17, 2020
1,320
800
113
Sorry, but I fail to see in which world that would be a good great offer deal? If it was 800GB - okay. But 280GB??
 
Last edited:

Dev_Mgr

Active Member
Sep 20, 2014
133
48
28
Texas
I bought some P4800X 375GB Optane U.2 drives in October last year and paid a little over US $400 each. This was a good price and even currently a drive with this type of endurance will run you well over $1/GB.
 

NablaSquaredG

Layer 1 Magician
Aug 17, 2020
1,320
800
113
Not really.
See this one for example:
(for the sake of comparison ignore that there's no smart data, that's just an example)

229$ for an 800G NVMe SSD with 10DWPD - That's about 2.85times the endurance of the Optane SSD, assuming you only write 2.8T per day.

Like: If you need the Optane IOPS, go for it. I'd say that is a decent deal. Not great, not bad. But otherwise... It's a tiny SSD and quite expensive
 
  • Like
Reactions: itronin

james23

Active Member
Nov 18, 2014
441
122
43
52
Also very low latency of IOPS is a big + on the optane drives (even vs the excellent p3700 , or newer nvme drives).

In my experience, to date- you cant beat an optane drive as a ZFS slog. I have yet to see a MORE performant zfs SLOG device than opatanes.
(excluding persistant DRAM or other RAM solutions).
also, i feel that a SLOG drive is an excellent measure of a drives performance (and write endurance) - it may be one of the best realworld performance measurements.

please correct me if im wrong as it has been several months since i put together a ZFS box.

for reference here is a pcie optane SLOG drive from one zfs system (with decent/heavy load 24/7):

Bash:
root@freenas:~ # smartctl -a /dev/nvme0
smartctl 6.6 2017-11-05 r4594 [FreeBSD 11.2-STABLE amd64] (local build)
Copyright (C) 2002-17, Bruce Allen, Christian Franke, www.smartmontools.org

=== START OF INFORMATION SECTION ===
Model Number:                       INTEL SSDPED1D280GA
Serial Number:                      PHMB74220077280CGN
Firmware Version:                   E2010325
PCI Vendor/Subsystem ID:            0x8086
IEEE OUI Identifier:                0x5cd2e4
Controller ID:                      0
Number of Namespaces:               1
Namespace 1 Size/Capacity:          280,065,171,456 [280 GB]
Namespace 1 Formatted LBA Size:     512
Local Time is:                      Tue Apr 13 18:40:20 2021 CDT
Firmware Updates (0x02):            1 Slot
Optional Admin Commands (0x0007):   Security Format Frmw_DL
Optional NVM Commands (0x0006):     Wr_Unc DS_Mngmt
Maximum Data Transfer Size:         32 Pages

Supported Power States
St Op     Max   Active     Idle   RL RT WL WT  Ent_Lat  Ex_Lat
0 +    18.00W       -        -    0  0  0  0        0       0

Supported LBA Sizes (NSID 0x1)
Id Fmt  Data  Metadt  Rel_Perf
0 +     512       0         2

=== START OF SMART DATA SECTION ===
SMART overall-health self-assessment test result: PASSED

SMART/Health Information (NVMe Log 0x02, NSID 0xffffffff)
Critical Warning:                   0x00
Temperature:                        47 Celsius
Available Spare:                    100%
Available Spare Threshold:          0%
Percentage Used:                    0%
Data Units Read:                    211,159,156 [108 TB]
Data Units Written:                 968,189,906 [495 TB]
Host Read Commands:                 1,114,155,583
Host Write Commands:                13,794,603,429
Controller Busy Time:               5,308
Power Cycles:                       797
Power On Hours:                     20,931
Unsafe Shutdowns:                   177
Media and Data Integrity Errors:    0
Error Information Log Entries:      0

Error Information (NVMe Log 0x01, max 64 entries)
No Errors Logged
 
  • Like
Reactions: itronin

itronin

Well-Known Member
Nov 24, 2018
1,233
793
113
Denver, Colorado
Used Optane 900p 280's appear on the bay about once a week or two @ auction and typically go for between 190 and 217 (last one I bought was 217, one before was 185 I think)

I use them for SLOG on my TNC's.

My needs are met and I have a spare. If I burn through those or need to build servers for folks I'll probably switch to new P4801X.

Edit - and I have / use both AIC and U.2

Edit - forgot to link the excellent and obligatory STH writeup.
 
Last edited:
  • Like
Reactions: T_Minus

triples

Member
Nov 2, 2019
60
41
18
The rated endurance of consumer Optane drive is for warranty/marketing purpose only, not anything close to the hardware limit. It's not like NAND enterprise SSD, whose endurance is based on the rated P/E.
 
Last edited:

T_Minus

Build. Break. Fix. Repeat
Feb 15, 2015
7,625
2,043
113
These have been BIN over priced for a bit now, considering $219 used to be New Retail pricing :/
I wouldn't pay this, especially for this out of North America or Europe either, but that's my 02.

Some of the P4800x deals were better than this, but they sell pretty quick.

@csp-guy P4510 is a read drive not fast write or much endurance and > latency than a 900P, I wouldn't use one for a SLOG.
 

csp-guy

Active Member
Jun 26, 2019
372
153
43
Hungary, Budapest
Hey, @T_Minus

the IO/sec of p4510 is worse,

@p4510 Random Write (100% Span) 111500 IOPS
@900p Random Write (100% Span) 500000 IOPS

but p4510's seq read/write seq bandwidth is much better than 900p.
 

T_Minus

Build. Break. Fix. Repeat
Feb 15, 2015
7,625
2,043
113
Hey, @T_Minus

the IO/sec of p4510 is worse,

@p4510 Random Write (100% Span) 111500 IOPS
@900p Random Write (100% Span) 500000 IOPS

but p4510's seq read/write seq bandwidth is much better than 900p.
The 900P 280GB can write at 2TB\s the P4510 2TB can write at 2TB\s
P4510 write IOPs is 81,500
Optane write IOPs is 500,000
Optane write latency: 10 µs
P4510 write latency: 18 µs


The Optane write endurance is written as 2x as much but in reality it's much more than the P4510.



I use both of these drives in servers and my NVME Pool of P4500\P4510 and similar NVME use an Optane SLOG device.

They're both great drives but if you want write performance or for a SLOG device the Optane is the clear winner in both use cases.
 

itronin

Well-Known Member
Nov 24, 2018
1,233
793
113
Denver, Colorado
I too have both. p4510 4tb and as I've said both flavors of 280GB 900p. To answer my own curiosity I tried out the 900p, p3605, and p4510 as a slog (massive overkill capacity wise for the last two?) Nothing really scientific nor did I really track results but I was curious. On spinners, 900p was faster than p4510, p4510 was about the same as P3605. All were an improvement. As slog against SAS SSD (HUSMM1616) pool I saw improvement vs. no SLOG, 900p still fastest of the three, though not that it would make any signficiant observable difference against typical vm workloads. But faster than no slog . real world home office/lab impact is debatable.

but sometimes we do things 'cause we can.

If I was really cash constrained, or pcie lane constrained and had SAS channels I'd probably look at HGST SLC 100/200GB SAS SSD's. You're talking 20-35.00 for each SSD. you'll get some noticeable improvement against spinners and the SLC drives will LAST.

right now the cost of P3605 AIC and 900P AIC are not that far apart. However P3605 has a lot more capacity so I'd prefer to use that as a capacity tier and use a 900P as slog.

P4510 scales to much LARGER drive so I'd prefer to use that for capacity tier.

Nothing wrong with the P3700, and sometimes its about what is available (and I want that drive NOW) in your country/area, and then cost.

900P's AIC/U.2 are getting harder to find but they're not scarce.

EDIT as pointed out by @i386 below.
specwise P4800X is the king for what is readily available to us homelabbers. P4800X is the best probably the best intel SLOG readily available to homelabbers and I think STH even has a SLOG comparison with the 4800x in it - just too lazy to search for it at the moment.

P3605 AIC are pretty easy to find but again IMO you are wasting a bunch of capacity.

As @T_Minus pointed out those P4800X deals go quick. At entry its also a bit larger than the 900P so in my mind the question also enters should I really use that for a SLOG rather than capacity on say a really hot database?

Interesting discussion perhaps a little sideways from "is this a good deal"...

900P and my opinions:

Ultimately the price is at or above original MSRP. drive has been discontinued - typically that means price should go down right? Except this is an interesting bird and supply chain is still borked so price is trending up. You can find it used for less. endurance is most excellent and I'd not have a problem buying a used 900P for a slog.

Only other possible plus I can see and I don't know if the star citizen coupon is still good in these NIB drives. If it is and that's something you also want then I'd say factor that into your purchase 'cause you won't typically get an unused coupon with a used drive. and if you really want the coupons I think I have a couple from some of the drives I purchased - I don't game don't know if coupons are good or not. just let me know and they are yours (when I can find them).
 
Last edited:
  • Like
Reactions: techtoys

i386

Well-Known Member
Mar 18, 2016
4,221
1,540
113
34
Germany
specwise P4800X is the king for what is readily available to us homelabbers. I think STH even has a SLOG comparison with the 4800x in it - just too lazy to search for it at the moment.
Second place*
The kings/queens are dram based nvme ssds*[1] like microchip flashtec and radian rms-200 which can be found for ~$120 or less on ebay :D
Radian RMS-200 & Intel Optane 900P 480GB.PNG
Left side: Radian RMS-200 8GB
Right side: Intel Optane 900 480GB

*[1] Not considering technologies that work only with vendor X cpus ;)
 
  • Like
Reactions: itronin

Rand__

Well-Known Member
Mar 6, 2014
6,626
1,767
113
*[1] Not considering technologies that work only with vendor X cpus ;)
I always wondered whether NVDimms(-n, not p) do work with Epyc...
Its rarely mentioned, saw once it should, but given that it needs Bios support I assume rather not...

Are there Options like
1618564189970.png

in a SM Epyc board bios?
 

Rand__

Well-Known Member
Mar 6, 2014
6,626
1,767
113
too bad;) - thanks though

Let's see if somebody chimes in who might be able to help then :)