What makes a datacenter ssd special?

[MCH170]

This question has always bothered me but I never got a satisfactory explanation. Apart from the vague "higher quality components", what really makes (for example) Google use enterprise SSDs over high quality consumer grade ones?

Thanks.

 

[nexox]

Reliability features like power loss protection, much higher endurance, more consistent performance under write-heavy workloads, hardware encryption, real support from actual engineers (if you buy a good number of them, anyway.)

In particular enterprise endurance ratings are guaranteed by warranty, so they're real worst-case values, while consumer drive warranties don't cover early wearout, so they usually tell you the best-case endurance using the least-difficult workload. Running typical enterprise workloads like a database on a consumer drive will usually wear it out very quickly (plus the performance will usually be pretty poor.)

 

[CyklonDX]

worth adding on top what nexox wrote,
Most consumer grade ssd's during the review and first few months they ship with better nand chips (that perform better), then there's most commonly known switcheroo where they start selling poorer quality nand (where first x amount of GBs are same as in review samples, but then it slows down sometimes by even half.) -> it doesn't happen with all ssd's but it does happen - and consumer brands, and models don't really matter.

Enterprise grade disks typically always stay with same quality they were originally released, and deliver consistent performance throughout the disk.


// few years back i bought hynix gold's 500G ssd's, and tested them - they delivered perfect throughput for whole disk, then i bought it again a year later - and wasn't the case anymore -> after opening them the nand chips have changed. Samsung and adata were the biggest abusers of that in my testings.

 

[nexox]

Enterprise grade disks typically always stay with same quality they were originally released, and deliver consistent performance throughout the disk.

Because if you sell a pallet of SSDs to a large organization they'll notice if the performance isn't as described in the data sheet (which provides details about the benchmark and specific conditions to reproduce the performance ratings, unlike consumer drives that can pick whatever benchmark suits the hardware without telling you anything about it,) and they will get a replacement or return the gear, then never buy your products again.

 

[homeserver78]

Also more consistent read speed of old data. My Crucial P3 NVMe slows down to about 80 MB/s sequential read speed once the data is a few months old, probably due to NAND charge decay. (And this is despite the data being read in its entirety at least once per week through ZFS scrubs.)

 

[CyklonDX]

sequential read speed once the data is a few months

this is interesting, now i gotta go and test it myself .

 

[ghxst]

Also more consistent read speed of old data. My Crucial P3 NVMe slows down to about 80 MB/s sequential read speed once the data is a few months old, probably due to NAND charge decay. (And this is despite the data being read in its entirety at least once per week through ZFS scrubs.)

Is this still the case for modern SSDs like the sabrent rocket 4 plus / Solidigm P44 pro, or even the newer gen 5 drives?

 

[homeserver78]

this is interesting, now i gotta go and test it myself .

Please do, and report back!

Is this still the case for modern SSDs like the sabrent rocket 4 plus / Solidigm P44 pro, or even the newer gen 5 drives?

It seems to be very varying depending on drive model. There's a long thread with some talk about this over on Level1.

 

[CyklonDX]

Please do, and report back!

I can already tell you not the case with few ssd's, and nvme's i have right now under hand - tried reading and coping different old (not opened files in at least a year) and they were fine at full speed. (i'll order that crucial p3 out of interest)
(but the 1TB micron 3400 seem to be slower at writes in the last 100G of the disk only hitting 3.6GB/s write - just as if it was 500G model)

nvme
2x Micron 3400 1TB (one running at 500G overprovioning)
Hynix Plat P41 1T
Toshiba KXD51LN11T92 (full enterprise grade)

SSD
4x Crucial MX500 sata 2x500G, 2x1T
4x HGST SAS 800G,
4x Toshiba PX04SVB160 SAS 1.6TB

 

[MountainBofh]

For giggles, I just copied 50GB worth of files stored on my P44 pro drive in my Windows 10 workstation that haven't been touched since early June to my Linux file server. File copy was at a sustained 10gb, so at least in my setup there was no drop off in read speed on old data.

 

[Prophes0r]

It's also about consistency.

Consumer SSDs are more concerned with putting the biggest number on the box. You get "up to" whatever the maximum speeds are under only the most ideal conditions.
Enterprise SSDs are more concerned with making sure their rates don't go BELOW their rating. They will be generously overprovisioned, but usually also have all the "boosty" stuff turned off.

Consumer drives are designed like a teenager tuning a street racing car.
Pile on the boost until it threatens to blow up.
Who cares if it works on Monday?
It's also going to drive like crap 99% of the time because they welded the engine mounts, have a suspension so stiff your spine will feel the cracks in the pavement, be super loud because sound insulation is heavy, and run hot because it only needs to stay cool for a mile and water is heavy.
They are going to be cheap, because the teen is going to get the car from a wrecker and parts from the junkyard.

Enterprise SSDs, on the other hand, are dump trucks.
They will run all day, every day for a decade if properly maintained.
They are specced so you get the same performance every time when it's empty, and every time it's full.
It doesn't need to be tuned to within an inch of exploding. It has a job to do and it will get it done.
They are going to be expensive, because they will be overbuilt so they won't fail early.

 

[T_Minus]

worth adding on top what nexox wrote,
Most consumer grade ssd's during the review and first few months they ship with better nand chips (that perform better), then there's most commonly known switcheroo where they start selling poorer quality nand (where first x amount of GBs are same as in review samples, but then it slows down sometimes by even half.) -> it doesn't happen with all ssd's but it does happen - and consumer brands, and models don't really matter.

Enterprise grade disks typically always stay with same quality they were originally released, and deliver consistent performance throughout the disk.


// few years back i bought hynix gold's 500G ssd's, and tested them - they delivered perfect throughput for whole disk, then i bought it again a year later - and wasn't the case anymore -> after opening them the nand chips have changed. Samsung and adata were the biggest abusers of that in my testings.

Changing the physical NAND chip on an identical model drive was likely due to availability and also likely affected performance because they went from different capacity chip... ie: 64GB to 128GB not because it's a different manufacturer of the chip itself.

Any proof of this from someone like @Patrick that's been reviewing drives over the yearS? I've yet to see anyone mention this.

 

[CyklonDX]

from different capacity chip... ie: 64GB to 128GB not because it's a different manufacturer of the chip itself.

Same model, same sizes.
(it blew up with adata as i recall but talk about it been around for years -- recommend just reading final thoughts)

Not-So-Solid State: SSD Makers Swap Parts Without Telling Us

Buying SSD storage can be an uncalculated risk

www.tomshardware.com

here's another

https://www.extremetech.com/computing/326200-western-digital-caught-bait-and-switching-customers-with-slow-ssds