Testing Intel Postville, anyone else with SSD experience

[UtwigMU]

I borrowed 160GB Intel Postville SSD for the weekend from work. Yesterday I cloned my Windows 7 install from 100GB Hitachi 7200RPM on it. There is a performance difference but it's not night and day, also boot up, hibernation (4GB RAM) takes long - about 30 seconds to 1 minute (We have one Latitude with Samsung 128GB and it resumes from hibernation (also 4GB) in few seconds, 7 boots up to logon screen in 12. This is clean 7 install with not much programs, while my 7 install is heavy and has been upgraded from RC to RTM.

My X61T is however limited to SATA 1 speds (150MB/s) because they opted to maintain backwards compatibility with Ultrabay Slim IDE drives.

The apps starts seem about twice as fast and it's snappier but not as snappy as I expected.

If you want me to run any benchmarks (need to work in X64) I'll run them.

[MultimediaMan]

I have a pair of X25Ms in my main Rig on ICH10R in RAID0...

Still running WinXP32 'cause my soundcard doesn't yet have Win7 Drivers.

Boot time is under 8 seconds from BIOS Post to the desktop (AV and everything else running).

--------------------------------------------------
CrystalDiskMark 2.2 (C) 2007-2008 hiyohiyo
      Crystal Dew World : [URL]http://crystalmark.info/[/URL]
--------------------------------------------------
   Sequential Read :  421.183 MB/s
  Sequential Write :  150.345 MB/s
 Random Read 512KB :  262.188 MB/s
Random Write 512KB :  113.360 MB/s
   Random Read 4KB :   21.642 MB/s
  Random Write 4KB :   90.146 MB/s
         Test Size : 100 MB
              Date : 2009/04/28 8:25:01

Haven't tried it lately after a BIOS update and newer ICH10R Drivers.

[cjolley]

I am putting together a database server, among others, in a new rack.
HP P800 SAS controller and 24 raid-1,0 15k dual port drives on the data box.
I'll run that benchmark on it on Monday for comparison.
Got me curious.
Not that I would treat a $60k server rack as a toy or anything. ahem...

[Jammrock]

The ironic bit is that a 24 disk RAID 10 w/ 15k HDDs will have less IO than a true enterprise SSD solution. With a setup like that you'll get maybe 2500-3000 IOPS. Ent SSDs push 60k-100k+ IOPS with a single drive/card.

Pliant is "new" to the ent SSD space. Their product is not out, so this is all hearsay, but they claim >160k IOPS with their 3.5" SSD.

http://www.plianttechnology.com/lightning_ls.php

Of the proven performance Ent SSDs you have Fusion io. One of my clients has a pair of these in a RAID1. VERY fast, and real world numbers are pretty close to their marketing numbers.

http://www.fusionio.com/Products.aspx

Now imagine four of either of these in a RAID 10 Granted, a RAID 10 ent SSD solution costs about ~$35k-$110k ($32k for 4 x 80GB io-drives to ~$110k for 4 x 640GB io-drive duos). And this doesn't solve the problem of "what happens if my server goes down" that traditional multi-controller SANs have, so if you want true redeindancy you have to build a cluster and you get a fraction of the disk space and ... you get the idea. SSDs ain't cheap, especially in the enterprise, but they are getting there.

[UtwigMU]

160GB Intel Postville G2

--------------------------------------------------
CrystalDiskMark 2.2 (C) 2007-2008 hiyohiyo
      Crystal Dew World : http://crystalmark.info/
--------------------------------------------------

   Sequential Read :  119.118 MB/s
  Sequential Write :   80.068 MB/s
 Random Read 512KB :  105.759 MB/s
Random Write 512KB :   80.148 MB/s
   Random Read 4KB :   13.631 MB/s
  Random Write 4KB :   22.509 MB/s

         Test Size : 100 MB
              Date : 2009/09/20 11:19:08

100GB Hitachi 7K100

--------------------------------------------------
CrystalDiskMark 2.2 (C) 2007-2008 hiyohiyo
      Crystal Dew World : http://crystalmark.info/
--------------------------------------------------

   Sequential Read :   18.681 MB/s
  Sequential Write :   17.086 MB/s
 Random Read 512KB :   12.698 MB/s
Random Write 512KB :   16.599 MB/s
   Random Read 4KB :    0.327 MB/s
  Random Write 4KB :    0.298 MB/s

         Test Size : 100 MB
              Date : 2009/09/20 11:57:38

				Intel	Hitachi	Diff

Power-on to logon screen	0:21	0:36	42%

Hibernate			0:32	0:44	27%
Resume to logon screen		0:19	0:22	14%

Measured from BIOS POST

Here are my results. The reason for low score is probably the limit of ICH7, ULV 1.6GHz processor and the artificial limit to SATA1 speeds chosen by Lenovo.

Also for some reason I left the BIOS in Compatibility instead of AHCI mode.
System
Thinkpad X61 Tablet 7763-CU8
1.6GHz Intel ULV C2D
4GB DDR2
Win7 X64 Ultimate RTM

Now the question is, should I go for Intel 160GB, Samsung 256GB (slower but cheaper / GB) or go with 500GB WD for space and price with the risk of data loss on drop.

[cjolley]

The ironic bit is that a 24 disk RAID 10 w/ 15k HDDs will have less IO than a true enterprise SSD solution. With a setup like that you'll get maybe 2500-3000 IOPS. Ent SSDs push 60k-100k+ IOPS with a single drive/card.

I don't think it's ironic, it would be expected.
After all, we are talking about at least half the price.
It's about $3k for the enclosure, $13k for the 25 drives, and $800 for the controller.
$17k for the whole thing. Less the server, of course, which has it's own 8 drives in raid 6.

And there are three other servers in the rack for a total of about 50 drives.
My budget was pretty flexible, but I doubt it would have accommodated 50 SSDs

[Jammrock]

mmmm ... 50 SSDs ... *geek drool*

[cjolley]

Hmmm...
CrystalDisk is out as it's Windows only, and it doesn't sound like it supports raid or SAS.
Turns out finding a drive benchmark that will run on 64bit Oracle Enterprise Linux is not that easy.

I'm going to try to get Bonnie++ to work, but it's 32bit so I don't know...

[Fluff]

and just for a laugh. My Dell D430 HDD. (60gb 1.8" 4200rpm)

--------------------------------------------------
CrystalDiskMark 2.2 (C) 2007-2008 hiyohiyo
Crystal Dew World : http://crystalmark.info/
--------------------------------------------------

Sequential Read : 12.430 MB/s
Sequential Write : 16.697 MB/s
Random Read 512KB : 10.447 MB/s
Random Write 512KB : 10.481 MB/s
Random Read 4KB : 0.303 MB/s
Random Write 4KB : 0.471 MB/s

Test Size : 100 MB
Date : 2009/09/21 19:41:07