SSD's for VM storage

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cafcwest

cafcwest

Member
Feb 15, 2013
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Richmond, VA
I am currently building up a test environment for virtual desktops. It is Hyper-V based, using local storage, and will have Hyper-V Replica running in the background - I feel it important to note this last bit because the build out relies more on the clustering of hosts for redundancy than actual hardware-level redundancy as us 'server guys' understand it. Why build a RAID-based logical drive when, with the power of Hyper-V Replica (allowing near seemless migrations of guests), it doesn't matter if I lose a single SSD - take the host down and move on. Or so that is my current thinking, and the reason why we are talking MLC SSD's (more or less) in the data center.


This brings me back to the storage discussion. I am considering the following three drives, with my perceived pros/cons:


Intel 520 Series 480GB - MLC

Pro: proven SandForce controller, great performance
Pro: Intel reliability
Con: Cost per GB is highest of the bunch
Con: Cost per GB grows even higher if I overprovision the devices, as may be 'smart' with an MLC device


PNY Prevail Elite 480GB - eMLC

Pro: SandForce controller again
Pro: eMLC chips should deliver significantly more writes than standard MLC
Pro: With the eMLC chips, I would be more comfortable with not overprovisioning the devices, leading to;
Pro: Good value!
Con: PN-who? (Reputation). Yes, they make RAM and stuff, I know. And I have a 512MB thumb drive of there's from a hundred years ago (that still works)


Samsung 840 Pro Series 512GB - MLC

Pro: Performance through the roof!
Pro: Good value, even if I do overprovision the devices
Con: Still MLC device, concerns about writes


A lot of my thinking and concerns go back to the amount of writes to the devices. But being that they are desktops, I don't have a very firm metric by which to establish any calculations for writes - 'users can be users' as I am heard to commonly utter.


All of them are playing in a similar price range. The Samsung is tempting as it is probably the cheapest, offers the greatest capacity, and is the best performer of the group. But if I OP the device, it brings the amount of storage into the range of the PNY. And lastly, I am still quite tempted on Intel my reputation alone - I've got approximately 100 Intel SSD's out in the field, all the way back to the G2 series, without a single failure to date (knock on wood)

Community thoughts?

Thanks in advance.
 
D

dba

Moderator
Feb 20, 2012
1,477
184
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San Francisco Bay Area, California, USA
One characteristic of VM farms is that they always have IO going on. This leaves no time for the SandForce background cleanup routines to run. In my prior VM machine my five non-RAID SandForce drives experienced a very large write performance drop (falling from 400+ MB/S to around 90MB/S) from which they were never able to recover without a secure erase.

I switched to Samsung drives, which seem to run foreground cleanup more agressively, to the point that they perform just fine over time in my VM setup.

So for me it's the Samsung 830 or 840 Pro 512GB drive for VMs, though I will be looking at the upcoming Micron/Crucial M500 1TB SSD because of its awesome capacity.

Also, I think eMLC is overkill for the standard VM use cases - servers that putter along at low CPU utilization (and low write IOPS) day after day. Do you need that kind of reliability?

cafcwest said:
I am currently building up a test environment for virtual desktops. It is Hyper-V based, using local storage, and will have Hyper-V Replica running in the background - I feel it important to note this last bit because the build out relies more on the clustering of hosts for redundancy than actual hardware-level redundancy as us 'server guys' understand it. Why build a RAID-based logical drive when, with the power of Hyper-V Replica (allowing near seemless migrations of guests), it doesn't matter if I lose a single SSD - take the host down and move on. Or so that is my current thinking, and the reason why we are talking MLC SSD's (more or less) in the data center.


This brings me back to the storage discussion. I am considering the following three drives, with my perceived pros/cons:


Intel 520 Series 480GB - MLC

Pro: proven SandForce controller, great performance
Pro: Intel reliability
Con: Cost per GB is highest of the bunch
Con: Cost per GB grows even higher if I overprovision the devices, as may be 'smart' with an MLC device


PNY Prevail Elite 480GB - eMLC

Pro: SandForce controller again
Pro: eMLC chips should deliver significantly more writes than standard MLC
Pro: With the eMLC chips, I would be more comfortable with not overprovisioning the devices, leading to;
Pro: Good value!
Con: PN-who? (Reputation). Yes, they make RAM and stuff, I know. And I have a 512MB thumb drive of there's from a hundred years ago (that still works)


Samsung 840 Pro Series 512GB - MLC

Pro: Performance through the roof!
Pro: Good value, even if I do overprovision the devices
Con: Still MLC device, concerns about writes


A lot of my thinking and concerns go back to the amount of writes to the devices. But being that they are desktops, I don't have a very firm metric by which to establish any calculations for writes - 'users can be users' as I am heard to commonly utter.


All of them are playing in a similar price range. The Samsung is tempting as it is probably the cheapest, offers the greatest capacity, and is the best performer of the group. But if I OP the device, it brings the amount of storage into the range of the PNY. And lastly, I am still quite tempted on Intel my reputation alone - I've got approximately 100 Intel SSD's out in the field, all the way back to the G2 series, without a single failure to date (knock on wood)

Community thoughts?

Thanks in advance.
Click to expand...
 
cafcwest

cafcwest

Member
Feb 15, 2013
136
14
18
Richmond, VA
Awesome feedback, and in 30 minutes to boot! (I love this forum!)

That is great info about your experiences with the SandForce-based devices in VM storage.

Regarding MLC versus eMLC, it is a question. It is not so much that I went looking for an eMLC based solution, simply that when I started crunching the numbers, it became viable. Using street (Amazon) prices:

Samsung 840 Pro 512GB (no OP) - $0.93/GB
PNY Prevail Elite 480GB - $1.10/GB

1TB capacities will really change the game. Micron stated a Q1 2013 ship date at CES, and Q1 only has a few more weeks by my count. Of course therein comes the risk of early adoption and such, but $0.60/GB is pretty irresistible.
 
cafcwest

cafcwest

Member
Feb 15, 2013
136
14
18
Richmond, VA
Patrick said:
First - awesome find on the PNY side.
Click to expand...

Thank you sir. I was on a Newegg or Superbiiz or similar, and remember late one night glancing through the "Enterprise SSD" section and coming across them. Not a lot of feedback online about people using them in production which is a disappointing, but not necessarily bad (if they were unstable OCZ style junk, I'd think people would be writing about it)

240GB seems to be the price and performance sweet spot with the current size of NAND and capabilities of controllers. But with my use case, virtual desktops, I need to space of the larger drives.
 
C

cactus

Moderator
Jan 25, 2011
830
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CA
I was looking into the PNYs a couple of weeks ago. I read a few places that they have an old firmware and PNY hasn't been great at getting a new one out. The idea is great, but wish it was a more common drive producer with some firmware update track record.
 
M

mrkrad

Well-Known Member
Oct 13, 2012
1,244
52
48
dude return the prevail elite. we got them day 1 and they have rig wires. aka resolders. Performance was not stellar and very latent (jumpy). If you have to sell product like SSD with rig wires on the board - that's ghetto.

they did match EMLC but firmware form PNY is not Intel quality.
 
Jeggs101

Jeggs101

Well-Known Member
Dec 29, 2010
1,529
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Were they inside or out? I thought LSI-Sandforce firmware was almost all the same?

Would be amazin if SanDisk made these.
 
cafcwest

cafcwest

Member
Feb 15, 2013
136
14
18
Richmond, VA
High cost on the Intel coupled with the feedback on the PNY is making me consider pulling the trigger on a box of Samsung SSD goodness.

According to Newegg, the 840 Pro 64GB is due to be released 3/29/13, which I'd use for the hypervisor install.


Anyone have any experience buying SSD's in bulk. And by bulk, I mean the box amount - most SSD/HDD ship ten or twenty to a box. Can any distributors beat, in bulk, what Amazon charges everyday?! :)
 
N

nitrobass24

Moderator
Dec 26, 2010
1,087
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TX
Here is my opinion.

I like that companies are innovating with things like eMLC to extend life and add writes, but the facts remain that these drives will last much longer then you will probably use them. I don't want this to come across wrong, but are you really going to have that drive in 5 years? Probably not. It will not have run out of write by then.

When I bought drives for my setup I stuck with mainstream brands. Intel + Samsung and bought purely on price. Call me crazy but it works just great.
 
T

TheBay

New Member
Feb 25, 2013
220
1
0
UK
Im going to go with Samsung myself for the datastore, especially after hearing great things everywhere and especially on here too. Though the new Micron/Crucial sounds interesting.

I use SLC SSD eUSB for my ESXi install :)
 
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A

awedio

Active Member
Feb 24, 2012
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43
I'd be very surprised if there's much discount in "bulk" pricing.

Patrick should know, he deals with them peeps all the time ;)

cafcwest said:
High cost on the Intel coupled with the feedback on the PNY is making me consider pulling the trigger on a box of Samsung SSD goodness.

According to Newegg, the 840 Pro 64GB is due to be released 3/29/13, which I'd use for the hypervisor install.


Anyone have any experience buying SSD's in bulk. And by bulk, I mean the box amount - most SSD/HDD ship ten or twenty to a box. Can any distributors beat, in bulk, what Amazon charges everyday?! :)
Click to expand...
 
Patrick

Patrick

Administrator
Staff member
Dec 21, 2010
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awedio said:
I'd be very surprised if there's much discount in "bulk" pricing.

Patrick should know, he deals with them peeps all the time ;)
Click to expand...
Despite popular belief, I don't have the funds to buy that many at a time.
 
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