Re: SSDs with Postgresql?

Instead of the usual SSD, you may want to consider the 'ioDrive' products from "Fusion-io".
http://www.fusionio.com/

This company makes enterprise-class storage on a board populated with flash and managed by their own supposedly-sophisticated drivers. The board + drivers are meant to get around the problems of SSDs, such as write-failures. They make both SLC and MLC products, at different sizes, to meet different budgets and purposes.

I tried them about 3 years ago on a database server (not Postgres). The real-world speed was excellent, yet disappointing in that it performed as well as our high-end RAID-10 from HP. We were looking for even more speed, and were promised that, but did not see it in our trials.
Caveats:
• This was using their first attempt at Windows drivers.
• We may not have tuned the settings properly.
In the end, we chose to keep our RAID for the time being.

So, while I can't specifically recommend their products, I certainly suggest considering them. They have drivers for Linux and Windows, but apparently their rumored Mac OS X drivers never came to fruition.

Other benefits beyond speed include size, power, and heat. An internal board with flash saves on all three, compared to a RAID made of either discs or SSDs.

--Basil Bourque