Samsung PM863/SM863 Discussion

[Jeggs101]

I saw today that the PM863 scales to 3.8TB. But at 1.92TB the $150 or so premium ($1099 PM or $1259 SM) i'd probably get the SM version and not deal with TLC.

Anyone planning to get one?

 

[Patriot]

I will probably wait a few months for the first price drop.

 

[Deslok]

I'd love to but i don't have a good use case as of now, at 2k the 4tb drive is well enough priced to compete with mechanical storage for density, a 24 drive 2u enclosure would fit 96TB raw compared to 3u for the same capacity mechanical(although cost wise is another issue)

All that being said right now what i need/want are fast 12gbps SAS drives for cachecade

 

[tigweld0101]

These are priced around $.50/gb. I can't wait until they sell for like the same as current pm853t's per gig. At $1k each I could see having two 3.8tb drives

 

[neo]

My next large SSD purchase(s) will be NVMe, AHCI's inevitable death is ever coming

 

[T_Minus]

I can't see spending that for non NVME SSD in this new world we live in

Once price drops, then I'll take 48 4TB SSD LOL!!

 

[Deslok]

even at that price they're attractive if you're paying per unit in a colocation they could certainly save some space. at the pricing of the PM835 i'm seing on ebay right now they'd be in the ~1300USD range which is quite the drop.

 

[Patrick]

Samsung SM863 and PM863 benchmarks first to post! Added a bunch of comparison drives that folks may have from HP servers or other places (e.g. ebay)

Also, expanded a bit from the typical test suite. One nice thing is that I now have 60+ SSDs benchmarked so it is easy to get comparison data now.

 

[Deslok]

big and fast, It's a shame they're limited to SATAIII I'm curious why there aren't more drives with a SAS12 controller

 

[Patrick]

big and fast, It's a shame they're limited to SATAIII I'm curious why there aren't more drives with a SAS12 controller

Only reason to do SAS3 is if you are trying to fit these in a scale up application to a large number of disks.

Small arrays/ web hosting - SATA is fine
Scale out - SATA is fine
Small scale up - SATA + PCIe/ NVMe
Performance - NVMe

SAS3 is slower than first gen NVMe so vendors are focusing on NVMe now and SATA for cheap/ big capcity.

 

[Kneelbeforezod]

Given that PM863s are a cople of years old now are they a good buy for NVME with their current price point around 200 for the 2.5 form factor?

 

[Evan]

I have a PM863a in 3.84tb (and a few smaller down to 240gb)
Like them, solid drives, Low power, 7mm thick, cool running.
Price is good even new.

In hindsight I wish I had more of these rather than SAS3 drives due to the extra controller needed, heat, power etc.

 

[croakz]

Agree with @Evan. I have some PM863s (960GB and 1.92TB) and a SAS3 PM1633 (3.84TB). Wish I got a larger PM863 vs the hassle of supporting a single SAS3 drive.

 

[Evan]

@croakz I think my SAS3,s are PM1633 in 960gb and PM1655 in 1.6tb , was tempted to try trading then for sata drives but figured it would be very hard since warranty etc with them being OEM drives.

I would prefer just to use NVMe when high performance is needed and s few big sata for everything else, and I can't really tell the performance difference between them and the SAS drives as my workload is light.