Re: Contemplating SSD Hardware RAID

On Tue, Jun 21, 2011 at 3:32 PM, Scott Marlowe <scott(dot)marlowe(at)gmail(dot)com> wrote:
> On Tue, Jun 21, 2011 at 2:25 PM, Yeb Havinga <yebhavinga(at)gmail(dot)com> wrote:
>
>> strange values mean. It's too bad however that OCZ doesn't let the user
>> choose which firmware to run (the tool always picks the newest), so after
>> every upgrade it'll be a surprise what values are supported or if any of the
>
> That right there pretty much eliminates them from consideration for
> enterprise applications.

As much as I've been irritated with Intel for being intentionally
oblique on the write caching issue -- I think they remain more or less
the only game in town for enterprise use. The x25-e has been the only
drive up until recently to seriously consider for write heavy
applications (and Greg is pretty skeptical about that even). I have
directly observed vertex pro drives burning out in ~ 18 months in
constant duty applications (which if you did the math is about right
on schedule) -- not good enough IMO.

ISTM Intel is clearly positioning the 710 Lyndonville as the main
drive in database environments to go with for most cases. At 3300
IOPS (see http://www.anandtech.com/show/4452/intel-710-and-720-ssd-specifications)
and some tinkering that results in 65 times greater longevity than
standard MLC, I expect the drive will be a huge hit as long as can
sustain those numbers writing durably and it comes it at under the
10$/gb price point.

merlin