NVMe / PCIe Reliability?

[nitrobass24]

Thinking about some changes to my SSD Tier on my home NAS.
Right now I have 2x S3710 800GB drives in a RAID1. All of my Docker Containers run here as well as an Ubuntu VM for Plex. I do a daily backup of the SSD volume locally to HDD and to the Cloud.

I have a single PCIe slot and was considering moving to a single NVMe Device, so I could free up two of my Drive Bays.
Obviously, if it dies, I would have to rebuild/restore from backup, but none of my actual data is stored here. Wouldn't be the end of the world to re-build 4-6 containers.

Overall, I am curious what people think about the reliability of NVMe devices as compared to Enterprise Sata SSDs?
Better yet, does anyone have any data points they can share?

 

[T_Minus]

IMHO based on 0 data points or white papers is they're really no different assuming you keep them cool.

 

[acquacow]

It all just comes down to DWPD...

 

[bitrot]

Very comparable reliability, taken from the Intel website:

Intel S3710 800GB:

Reliability

• Vibration - Operating: 2.17 GRMS (5-700HZ)
• Vibration - Non-Operating: 3.13 GRMS (5-800Hz)
• Shock (Operating and Non-Operating): 1000 G/0.5ms
• Operating Temperature Range: 0°C to 70°C
• Endurance Rating (Lifetime Writes): 16.9PB
• Mean Time Between Failures (MTBF): 2,000,000 hrs
• Uncorrectable Bit Error Rate (UBER): 10^17
• Warranty Period: 5 yrs

The NVMe equivalent Intel P3700 800GB:

Reliability

• Vibration - Operating: 2.17 GRMS
• Vibration - Non-Operating: 3.13 GRMS
• Shock (Operating and Non-Operating): 1000G/0.5msec
• Operating Temperature Range0°C to 70°C
• Endurance Rating (Lifetime Writes): 14.6 PBW (JEDEC Workload), 10 DWPD
• Mean Time Between Failures (MTBF): 2,000,000 Hrs
• Uncorrectable Bit Error Rate (UBER): less than 1 sector per 1e17 bits read
• Warranty Period: 5 yrs

I have two 1.6TB variants of the P3700 (U.2), awesome drives. Be aware that the NVMe drives need quite a bit more power than their SATA cousins though and hence better cooling:

S3710 800GB: 5.9W active, 0.6W idle
P3700 800GB: 18W write, 9W read, 4W idle

 

[cheezehead]

For reliability is the environment in which its installed and NAND used. If your using them to take all the writes, the drive better have a higher DWPD rating.

 

[Patrick]

@nitrobass24 That is something I have considered too. In fact, I moved my primary workstation to a single PM1725 800GB when I went Threadripper despite having two installed. AMD came out with RAID software but I am more nervous about gen 1 NVMe chipset RAID failing than the single PM1725.

If you have a good backup system, and it is not "mission critical" e.g. if it takes 2-3 days to get a replacement and you are down, that is fine. If you have a cluster where it will bring services back up, a single SSD is likely fine.

Intel has said P3700's will have a 0.28% AFR over five years. They will use more power than 2x SATA SSDs. Write endurance is unlikely to be a major issue despite what most say about the issue. The drives that have concerns with write endurance are heavy transactional DBs and write cache devices in front of large storage arrays.

Also, if you are doing this, get an AIC or a 2.5" SSD and ensure it has airflow. I trust enterprise drives quite a bit more than consumer m.2.

 

[nitrobass24]

Yea, you mean my Unifi and Nzbget Docker containers won’t “wear out” my SSDs [emoji52].

I was looking specifically at the the P3x00 800GB AICs. How does the PM1725 compare?


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[Patrick]

Yea, you mean my Unifi and Nzbget Docker containers won’t “wear out” my SSDs [emoji52].

I was looking specifically at the the P3x00 800GB AICs. How does the PM1725 compare?


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Decently similar. P3600's are easy to find.

 

[vrod]

I have a brand new 1.6tb p3600 2.5” (sealed) collecting dust here in Germany if interested...

To be honest, just load off nzb-traffic to a normal hdd. I run the OS on my P3700’s but temporary data like nzb’s get put onto a hdd since I don’t need the ssd speed for that.

Speaking from experience, I would say you can rely just as much on NVMe as you can on SATA ssd’s, given that you buy the right one for your use. I can only recommend the Intel P3xxx series for 24/7 use.

Intel’s online prediction tool predicts my P3700’s will last at least 50 years with my current workload. Even if they last 10 years I will be really happy as they were just a 900€ investment.