Re: SSDs - SandForce or not?

On 11/14/2012 01:11 AM, Toby Corkindale wrote:

> I'm wondering which type of SSDs would be better for use with
> PostgreSQL.

A few things:

1. While the controller may or may not have an impact, the presence of
an on-board super-capacitor will have more. SSDs should be considered
malignant devices that will go out of their way to destroy your data,
unless they have one of these.

2. Workload on a compressible system like PG is generally dependent on
your data sets. If you have lots of TOAST data, which is already
compressed, you get no benefit. If your use case doesn't show a lot of
random writes, optimizing for them is of questionable value.

3. SSDs also exist as effectively raw NVRAM, in the form of PCIe cards.
These cards come in several varieties, and these days, can be mounted in
external PCIe chassis in hot-swap bays much like more conventional drive
enclosures. Some of these use a kernel-level driver over a proprietary
controller, using neither Sandforce or anything else. They are also
close to an order of magnitude faster than an SSD because they discard
the SATA/SCSI bus entirely.

4. SSDs do have limited write cycles, and whether it's write leveling or
drive compression to reduce writes on the actual NVRAM chips, if you
honestly have a high write load, you're better off with whatever card
reports the highest longevity of the relatively scarce write cycles per
cell.

5. You're more likely to get performance improvements pursuing SLC
(single layer chips) versus cheaper MLC (multi-layer) for writing,
because the controller doesn't have to mask writes to the proper layer.

Basically, there's way more involved here than Sandforce vs. Others. Or
even Compressible vs. Not. SSDs are still a pretty Wild West kind of
thing, and you've got a lot more variables to consider than with
standard spindles.

--
Shaun Thomas
OptionsHouse | 141 W. Jackson Blvd. | Suite 500 | Chicago IL, 60604
312-444-8534
sthomas(at)optionshouse(dot)com

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