Intel S3700 400gb $50 OBO

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T_Minus

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They were gone the instant he posted them lol, i clicked right away it had only been posted a couple minutes and all were gone.

Last I saw them at this price they were Dell or some other brand so this was great :)
 

zack$

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Aug 16, 2018
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So...the second batch of drives I ordered were OEMs and the seller wiped all the OEM details from the drive faceplate....not cool.

Smart data also has about 2 years usage on all.. However, 100% life on all.
 

zack$

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Aug 16, 2018
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They are definitely rock solid drives, not EOL and the SATA interface saves on power and heat dispensation.

Also, apart from the size, the 800gb and 400gb models appaear technically identical (though the 800gb appears to be EOL and higher power draw).

@CaptainPoundSand, this is what got me thinking about an all s3700 array: Almost 20 TB (Or $50,000) Of SSD DC S3700 Drives, Benchmarked

Now....if only I could get my paws on a couple more at a decent price :D
 

CaptainPoundSand

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They are definitely rock solid drives, not EOL and the SATA interface saves on power and heat dispensation.

Also, apart from the size, the 800gb and 400gb models appaear technically identical (though the 800gb appears to be EOL and higher power draw).

@CaptainPoundSand, this is what got me thinking about an all s3700 array: Almost 20 TB (Or $50,000) Of SSD DC S3700 Drives, Benchmarked

Now....if only I could get my paws on a couple more at a decent price :D
Funny - I'm in the process of loosing my mind because my benchmarks SUCK with 48x ssd. - I fell into a couple of these trays a few weeks back and have been trying without much luck to get anywhere close to those numbers.

 

zack$

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Aug 16, 2018
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Just some food for thought: those numbers are raid-0...which (no matter how reliable the s3700s are) is insane at 48x. There is also a documented peak (which, in the article, could be a backplane issue).

How is your array set up? Looks like VM storage??
 
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manfri

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Nov 19, 2015
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more food for thought @CaptainPoundSand There is an expander on your setup?
One of the culprit is that SATA is way more inefficient when multiple drives is connected thru an expander (compared to SAS, and HPE do not recomend this kind of config with SATA SSD drives.
Also, the fact that HPE SAS expanders are supported with VSAN with maximum of 16 drives https://www.vmware.com/content/dam/.../vmware-implementing-vsan-on-hpe-proliant.pdf
and this post /dev/dump: Why SAS->SATA is not such a great idea made me think that this could be your problem.
 

CaptainPoundSand

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Just some food for thought: those numbers are raid-0...which (no matter how reliable the s3700s are) is insane at 48x. There is also a documented peak (which, in the article, could be a backplane issue).

How is your array set up? Looks like VM storage??

Maybe VM storage - I actually have some old I/O accelerator cards slotted in my esxi cluster with the idea to run gluster replica 3 from it.. (From my existing qnap NAS)
 
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CaptainPoundSand

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more food for thought @CaptainPoundSand There is an expander on your setup?
One of the culprit is that SATA is way more inefficient when multiple drives is connected thru an expander (compared to SAS, and HPE do not recomend this kind of config with SATA SSD drives.
Also, the fact that HPE SAS expanders are supported with VSAN with maximum of 16 drives https://www.vmware.com/content/dam/.../vmware-implementing-vsan-on-hpe-proliant.pdf
and this post /dev/dump: Why SAS->SATA is not such a great idea made me think that this could be your problem.
Hi,
Thanks for pointing this out! - The expander is on the supermicro chassis (while I do have one on the 380 chassis, but for the spinners) - I'm still trying to figure this out and how to cable the trays effectively.. Still have a bit more testing to isolate - but thinking its the HBA itself limiting me..
 

T_Minus

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You're not going to get anywhere near the IOPs if you're only using one HBA.

You need to be using the non-expander variation of the backplane SAS2 or SAS3, and you need to be using 3x HBA, 1 per-8x SSD.
To get maximum performance you should be using SAS3 HBAs too.

If you also got all these Intel SSD used or have tested on them a bit already you need to do a slow\full format on each and everyone, and then create the rest from there fresh.
 

CaptainPoundSand

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Mar 16, 2019
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You're not going to get anywhere near the IOPs if you're only using one HBA.

You need to be using the non-expander variation of the backplane SAS2 or SAS3, and you need to be using 3x HBA, 1 per-8x SSD.
To get maximum performance you should be using SAS3 HBAs too.

If you also got all these Intel SSD used or have tested on them a bit already you need to do a slow\full format on each and everyone, and then create the rest from there fresh.
Sounds like it may be better to break down and get a couple used d3700 sas3 shelf - seems cost of sas3 backplane for those 2u may negate the cost.

Someone suggested the Intel ssd tool and slowly I upgraded firmware and formatted - cleared a few of the errors I was getting..

If you don't mind me asking - what do you think of these ssd on a d3700 shelf and what hba (s) would you suggest? My dl380 has 3x 3.0 and 1x 2.0 pcie - currently slotted with 9211-8i for chassis spinners.. 560+ 10gbe nic, optane 900p (slog may not need now) and the 9201-16e feeding the 1 or 2 shelves..
 

T_Minus

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Feb 15, 2015
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Sounds like it may be better to break down and get a couple used d3700 sas3 shelf - seems cost of sas3 backplane for those 2u may negate the cost.

Someone suggested the Intel ssd tool and slowly I upgraded firmware and formatted - cleared a few of the errors I was getting..

If you don't mind me asking - what do you think of these ssd on a d3700 shelf and what hba (s) would you suggest? My dl380 has 3x 3.0 and 1x 2.0 pcie - currently slotted with 9211-8i for chassis spinners.. 560+ 10gbe nic, optane 900p (slog may not need now) and the 9201-16e feeding the 1 or 2 shelves..
SAS3 Backplanes for SC216 usually 100-250 on ebay, not that bad overall for a 48x drive setup :)
SAS2 Backplane for SC216 should be within same price range, and very likely performs the same from what we've discussed here on the forum, even using SAS2 cables, etc, plugged into the newer SAS3 HBA is beneficial.

Yes, intel ssd tool to update firmware, then do a full format (not quick).

LSI 3008 HBA - Can get branded like SuperMicro or the actual LSI labeled, then update\flash.

Performance is going to depend on your usage pattern, sync writes, ZoL or ? how you setup the pools, how you configure\tweak ZFS, etc, etc, etc :)

Assuming you are going to get 1M IOPs with hardware alone is a big mistake, that's like saying __hardware__ can do x Transactions\second for a database without actually configuring the database for your use case :D
 

Rand__

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CaptainPoundSand

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CaptainPoundSand

Active Member
Mar 16, 2019
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Ashburn, VA
SAS3 Backplanes for SC216 usually 100-250 on ebay, not that bad overall for a 48x drive setup :)
SAS2 Backplane for SC216 should be within same price range, and very likely performs the same from what we've discussed here on the forum, even using SAS2 cables, etc, plugged into the newer SAS3 HBA is beneficial.
Can you share some part numbers? I'm not seeing anything that fits to my CSE-216 near that price point. I did just breakdown and buy 3x M1215 SAS3 controllers in preparation to go balls to the wall..
 

nthu9280

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@T_Minus has some secret sources that he can't reveal.

In the meantime, the lowest I've seen for BPN-SAS-216A was around $250
SuperMicro BPN-SAS-216A
SuperMicro BPN-SAS3-216A
SuperMicro BPN-SAS3-216A-N4
 

CaptainPoundSand

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@T_Minus has some secret sources that he can't reveal.

In the meantime, the lowest I've seen for BPN-SAS-216A was around $250
SuperMicro BPN-SAS-216A
SuperMicro BPN-SAS3-216A
SuperMicro BPN-SAS3-216A-N4
Ah good - my research did come up with the right part numbers ( I find there was a different revision of 216 that had some different part numbers.) - I may end up with SAS3-216A or the N4 - though I'm not understanding how the NVME ports wire up.