Re: Contemplating SSD Hardware RAID

On 06/21/2011 05:17 PM, Greg Smith wrote:

> If they just do the same style of write cache and reliability rework
> to the enterprise line, but using better flash, I agree that the
> first really serious yet affordable product for the database market
> may finally come out of that.

After we started our research in this area and finally settled on
FusionIO PCI cards (which survived several controlled and uncontrolled
failures completely intact), a consultant tried telling us he could
build us a cage of SSDs for much cheaper, and with better performance.

Once I'd stopped laughing, I quickly shooed him away. One of the reasons
the PCI cards do so well is that they operate in a directly
memory-addressable manner, and always include capacitors. You lose some
overhead due to the CPU running the driver, and you can't boot off of
them, but they're leagues ahead in terms of safety.

But like you said, they're certainly not what most people would call
affordable. 640GB for two orders of magnitude more than an equivalent
hard drive would cost? Ouch. Most companies are familiar---and hence
comfortable---with RAIDs of various flavors, so they see SSD performance
numbers and think to themselves "What if that were in a RAID?" Right
now, drives aren't quite there yet, or the ones that are cost more than
most want to spend.

It's a shame, really. But I'm willing to wait it out for now.

--
Shaun Thomas
OptionsHouse | 141 W. Jackson Blvd. | Suite 800 | Chicago IL, 60604
312-676-8870
sthomas(at)peak6(dot)com

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