ZeusRAM under $300 BO on Ebay

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tubeamps

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Dec 1, 2014
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HGST ZeusRAM Z4 3.5" 8GB SAS Hard Drive 6Gb/s MLC Enterprise SSD RAM Z4RZF3D-8UC

Listed at $445. Sent a BO of $298 and it was accepted within minutes.

Told a friend that was also in the market and they bid in the low $200 range and received a counteroffer of $400. You might be able to do a bit better than me, but I wouldn't try too much lower.

It will be interesting to see if this helps or hurts performance on a ZFS RAID 10 array that will consist of 4 x 400GB Sandisk Lightning Ultra Gen IIs (SLC and Dual port SAS2 to start, but SAS3 when I find a good controller at a decent price. Also note the quoted specs are for single port SAS).

If it doesn't help the pool above I'm pretty sure it will help a bulk data SATA3 SSD pool that I'm planning.
 

tubeamps

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Dec 1, 2014
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If you are referring to the ZeusRAM, I believe you are correct that there have been no updates and with the NVME performance of good drives and various implementations of NVDIMM I don't think there will be an updated ZeusRAM.

If you are referring to the Sandisk Lightning Ultra Gen II I can assure you that they do exist (I have 2 and hopefully 2 more on the way) and I linked the datasheet above. With 12GB Dual Port SAS, SLC w/25DWD, compatibility with existing enclosures, a claim of UBER of <1 sector in 10^19 bits read (I've only seen Fusion IO beat this and I haven't seen anyone else match it) and surprisingly low prices these make for pretty awesome drives. Especially until NVME is more widely supported, prices come down a bit or if you need the redundancy of dual port SAS (NVME is starting to work it out with drives like the Intel D3700, but I'm not sure if it is publicly available and I'm afraid to see the cost.)
 

tubeamps

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Dec 1, 2014
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luannanxian, I stepped away while I was writing my last post and didn't see your's. There were a decent number of 400GB Lightning Ultra GenIIs under $250. I might have bought the last of the current stock though. With a bit of negotiating I picked up new drives below $200 :)
 

jerrytsao

MILAN X P5800X
Sep 11, 2016
39
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Shanghai, CN
SAS3 dual-port backplane is still too expensive and overkill for ZFS, and let's not talk about the almost non-exist NVMe dual-port backplane, also you can get 800GB Lightning Ultra Gen. II for ~$330, agreed it's the top affordable SAS3 drive in the market right now.
 

jerrytsao

MILAN X P5800X
Sep 11, 2016
39
31
18
Shanghai, CN
Where are you guys finding the 800GB Ultra Gen II's for $330?

I see there is an Eco Gen II 800GB drive for $320 BIN but that is it SanDisk 800GB Lighting Eco Gen II - 12Gb/s SAS - 2.5 SSD - SDLTODKR-800G-5CA1
One just ended couple days ago SanDisk 800GB Lighting Ultra Gen II - 12Gb/s SAS - 2.5 SSD - SDLTMCKW-800G-5CA1, same seller who somehow likes to list identical prices for lower and higher end (eg: Optimus Eco vs Optimus Ascend/Extreme, Lightning Eco Gen. II vs Lightning Ultra Gen. II)
 

tubeamps

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Dec 1, 2014
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Has anyone seen comparisons of the ZeusRam vs a P3600/P3700 (or similar) as ZIL?

I'm tempted to pick up another ZeusRam, I feel the prices are plummeting and they aren't selling flying off the shelves for a reason. Yes, endurance of the Zeus is theoretically unlimited, but OP a P3700 down to 8GB and the 7.3PBW rating of the 400GB drive is essentially "unlimited".

More so, the ZeusRam is really only good as a ZIL (I'm sure I could throw it in for swap/scratch space in a workstation, but that somehow seems sad). I'm already wondering if it's fast enough to benefit my primary pool. In 2 years my primary pool might be a all P3600/P3700s and a ZeusRAM ZIL would likely be the bottleneck. Even if performance is close at least the NVME drives would be a lot easier to re-purpose.
 

T_Minus

Build. Break. Fix. Repeat
Feb 15, 2015
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@tubeamps I just got my dual port cable to try for 'max performance' from the ZeusRAM :) Next step is to setup a baremetal ZFS install as my other are virtualized and passing NVME to OmniOS hasn't been working yet.

Then it will be to benchmark that setup in such a way that the ZeusRAM is utilized to fullest ie: continuous load that will cripple consumer ssd, and bring enterprise to steady state levels of performance and at that point see if ZeusRAM is better than normal SSD, NVME, etc... :)

I can't commit to doing it in a day or two as I've been away a bit and we just got 5+ inches of rain so I have a ton of work to do before benchmark fun :) but I will be doing it within the next couple weeks!

$300 for ZeusRAM and $450 for 1TB Intel NVME for L2ARC is sounding like a great affordable, fast system :)
 
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tubeamps

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@tubeamps I just got my dual port cable to try for 'max performance' from the ZeusRAM :) Next step is to setup a baremetal ZFS install as my other are virtualized and passing NVME to OmniOS hasn't been working yet.

Then it will be to benchmark that setup in such a way that the ZeusRAM is utilized to fullest ie: continuous load that will cripple consumer ssd, and bring enterprise to steady state levels of performance and at that point see if ZeusRAM is better than normal SSD, NVME, etc... :)

I can't commit to doing it in a day or two as I've been away a bit and we just got 5+ inches of rain so I have a ton of work to do before benchmark fun :) but I will be doing it within the next couple weeks!

$300 for ZeusRAM and $450 for 1TB Intel NVME for L2ARC is sounding like a great affordable, fast system :)
You rock T_Minus :)

If you don't mind, what cabling did you get to test dual port?

Also, I'm guessing you're hooking the ZeusRam to the same server. Would this technically not be Wideport, not dual port? This isn't a critique of you as I've said the same thing recently and even manufacturer's marketing material frequently get's it wrong and datasheets often aren't much better.

My understanding is that with dual port the drive would present 2 different WWN's with the intention of connecting to 2 servers for redundancy (although some controllers appear to handle this okay with MPIO many/most don't). With Wideport 1 WWN is presented and 2 SAS links are used with the intention of connecting them to the same server for performance.

If I'm understanding this correctly I think I have a few methods to use the ZeusRam in dual or wideport mode. I need to figure out how to accomplish this for my 4 SAS3 Lightning Ultra Gen IIs. They'll likely be going into a tower mounted to a simple 4 x 2.5" drive holder so I don't need to worry about a dual/wide port SAS backplane.
 

T_Minus

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Feb 15, 2015
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@tubeamps

Part #

Description

Lead Time

Price

Qty

Subtotal

1

SA-4382-HDD-.5M-N2

Int. HD MiniSAS (SFF-8643) to *2 Dual Port SAS Drive (SFF-8482), 30AWG 10G , .5 meter

Call

$75.45

1


Is what they called it, not cheap. $70+ ship. I think it was almost $90 and ~3 weeks wait for the cable! There's another thread here where someone was talking about ZeusRAM and we (me and others) shared various sources for these cables.
 

tubeamps

Active Member
Dec 1, 2014
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T_Minus,
Oy...That is expensive and a long time to wait. Is the MiniSAS to run on your 12g controllers? I'll look for that other thread. I have 4 SAS3 drives I wan't to run in wideport mode, so I may need to pick some of these up.

I have a Dell 0T3F4V that seems like it would do the trick for SAS2. Am I misunderstanding something?


I also have a Monoprice 10058 that claims to support dual channel SAS. It has 2 SATA style connectors for each drive slot and it seems like a SFF-8484 fan out cable would do the trick. These fan out cables say they are for SATA, but I'm not sure how else the Monoprice controller could support dual channel SAS if those fanout cables don't work. I have the cables and enclosure, so I just need to find the time to sit down and test.

PC Pitstop seems to have the same type of cable you mentioned above for a lot less. I've never done business with them, so don't take this as an endorsement. I just ordered my first SAS3 controller, so I'm not very familiar with cabling for it yet.
 

T_Minus

Build. Break. Fix. Repeat
Feb 15, 2015
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I got the 12Gbs / miniSas cable to go with my SAS3 HBA.

Not all cables will be rated for 'dual port' this one is "4382 Model #" specifically rated for that it says.

I have lots of the ones you linked to and 4x drive SAS fan-out too, but supposedly only certain model with 2x drive will work to do dual port on 1 controller, well see.

The whole purpose of this cable is to see if ZeusRAM performs better as it's stated in dual-port mode.
 

sfbayzfs

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May 6, 2015
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Any update on the dual port wide mode tests?

I put in an offer for 4 at around $280 or each so, intending to stripe 2 together in each of 2 systems, but got a ridiculous counteroffer at $440 per unit, probably because a few had sold (another seller has them at a similar price too, similar results). I rejected and put in an offer on only one, and eventually got it for a little over 300. I am glad I didn't waste more money on 4 of them after all - my original plan was to get over 2GB/s write to a striped pair as ZIL on a single 9207-8i card, since my updated main pool I am bringing online soon can write at over 2GB/s on spinners, and I wanted to coalesce writes and avoid fragmentation (not sure if that would happen to a significant degree though vs having the automatic on-disk ZIL on spinners though) Now I might just throw it onto my backup pool for the edge case durability, but it seems like kind of a waste.

There are still a ton left, and even if they can't do 1GB/s+ write in wide mode I would be interested in striping 4-8 together for some high write scratch space, but not until they are being dumped at under $100 each if that ever happens.
 

tubeamps

Active Member
Dec 1, 2014
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Good to hear that I was able to help someone get a deal. I have no idea what that seller is thinking with the multiple drive price.

The cable I have that I believe should work with wide port is MIA. I had it when I ordered the ZeusRAM and it's around somewhere. I have a backplane that should handle it, but it's only for 2.5" disks.

Also, I may be incorrect, outdated or maybe there's a version of ZFS that is capable of this, but I believe ZFS was designed to only allow mirrored ZIL and nor striped. First, if you RAID0 ZIL you are increasing your chances of problems because if 1 drive has a problem after a system failure you may as well have not had a ZIL. I definitely wouldn't stripe 4-8 unless it was for a benchmark. I have read about Oracle using quite a few drives for ZIL, so it must be possible, but I think you would want RAID10 at a minimum and at some point you are going to be increasing latency which would be counterproductive since the purpose of the ZeusRam is consistent low latency.

If a RAID10 of 4 ZeusRAMs was possible I wouldn't be surprised to see a larger Intel P3700 outperform it in most or all benchmarks. I've wondered how a 400GB P3700 massively overprovisioned would perform compared to a ZeusRAM. IIRC, the 800GB version has 1.25GB of DDR3-1600. Given the simple datapath of NVME over SAS the P3700 would do quite well if it is capable of using the data in it's write cache directly without first having to write it to NAND. Not sure if this is possible or not.
 

Taccess

New Member
Jan 21, 2018
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Hi

I realise this is a old thread.

I am wondering if there is anything software related that needs to be done to utilise a dual ports on a workstation. Win 10 ?

I am planning to buy a dual port 12Gb/s sas drive and a dual port SFF-8680 cable going to a purchased lsi 9361-8i 12Gb/s card.

I would like to connect each dual port to 1 server / my Workstation , need help understanding if anything else I need to know about achieving this as I am a newbie to sas.

Thanks