The Intel S37xx is their data center line right?  We've had some weird stuff in 
Windows and Linux servers get fixed by drive firmware updates.  There have been 
multiple updates since fall 2015.  Weird as in the Intel software in Windows 
showed both drives in a RAID 1 failed, though Windows could still read and 
write to that drive letter.  Based on the Linux errors I suspect the drives 
were temporarily dropping out and/or taking too long to access.

That said, I know you were asking for real world experience, but Intel does 
list reliability and drive write life specs for their SSDs if you open the PDFs 
on their site.  They do list compressed read and write speeds for some drives 
so be careful what table you're reading.

--

Steve Yates
ITS, Inc.

-----Original Message-----
From: List [mailto:list-boun...@lists.pfsense.org] On Behalf Of Karl Fife
Sent: Wednesday, May 18, 2016 1:18 PM
To: pfSense Support and Discussion Mailing List <list@lists.pfsense.org>
Subject: Re: [pfSense] Soeckris Net5501 SSD

Ed, you said it well here:  "wear leveling work is in SATA and DOM"

I think this is an important point, because If I understand correctly, there is 
nothing inherent to DOM or SATA to make it more or less suitable to the 
excellent implementations we've seen of over-provisioning, wear-leveling etc. 
in the other storage form factors. 
As you say though, that's were the work is taking place, so if you want it, DOM 
and SATA appear to be the devices to use. Funny how that works, but it appears 
to be market forces only, not technology which informs this detail.

Thanks too for the info on the Soekris 6501.  I have one in the feild, also 
with an MSata module.  I'm really glad I didn't try to upgrade that in place, 
or I might be talking ethyl the 60-year-old office manager through 
router-resurrection.  Fun.  You just saved my bacon.  Thanks for that.

In the realm of SSD's I have been using Intel S37xx's as ZFS intent log 
accelerators for as long as they've been available. Great devices.  Some 
installs have seen many terabytes of writes per week for years without issue.  
For a pfSense install, it's an absurd amount of overkill.  
Still, as you say, 'pro grade' SSD's are a mere $50, so 'pro' SSD's start to 
become an economical choice.

In particular, I see the Intel S35x0 ~80GB for $60.  Do you know if the 
reliability is in the same league as the s3700 series, it would be an easy 
choice given the high cost of downtime in a remote install.  Any experience 
with that series of devices in particular?

Thanks a lot Ed.  Your input was exactly what I was looking for!
-Karl

On 5/18/2016 10:11 AM, ED Fochler wrote:
> Karl,
>       There are numerous other similar answers to be found, but here’s mine:
>
> Get away from CF if you can.  The modern performance and wear leveling work 
> is in sata and DOM, those are better devices.  Abandon the nano-BSD and just 
> find the miscellaneous checkbox to put /tmp and /var in ram.  That’s the bulk 
> of the benefit without the separate distribution.  Although that is seldom 
> necessary any more either.
>
> My Soekris 6501 still doesn’t like the upgrade to PFSense 2.3 on mSata, but 
> I’m running one from a Sata disk on 2.3 just fine.  This problem seems 
> Soekris specific, but my summary is still that sata seems to be where the 
> support is.  And with SSD, I don’t see any benefit to staying away from sata 
> even if you are allergic to spinning disks.  Market forces have made 100GB 
> SSD’s available for less than $50, and that’s some wild over-provisioning for 
> an install that is happy in < 4GB.  You can get a nice Intel or “pro” samsung 
> for a little more if you want more insurance against having to visit those 
> devices.  I’m generally a fan of the SSDs with metal cases for heat 
> dissipation.
>
>       ED.
>
>
>
>
>
>> On 2016, May 17, at 6:09 PM, Karl Fife <karlf...@gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>> I have about 15 Net5501's OR Lanner FW-7541D's in the field running 
>> embedded/Nano on CF cards.  There's not enough space on a 1GB  CF to 
>> upgrade to v2.3.  Of course I can upgrade to larger CF cards, however 
>> the eventual phase-out of NanoBSD makes me wonder if it's better to 
>> install a SATA SSD (or SATA DOM) which would possibly eliminate the 
>> need to re-re-factor storage in the near future (e.g with the release 
>> of v 2.4, and the phase-out of NanoBSD: 
>> https://doc.pfsense.org/index.php/Upgrade_Guide#Planning_for_the_Futu
>> re )
>>
>> Question:
>> I'd like to ask what solid-state storage others are using on non-NanoBSD 
>> installs.  If running the "full" version of pfSense, Is it sufficient 
>> 'simply' to use a quality wear-leveling SATA DOM, or is it recommended to 
>> use something with even better write endurance?  I wouldn't have thought the 
>> pfSense write load is high, but blog posts from early adopters of SSD's + 
>> pfSense seem to have run into write endurance problems.   SSD's have 
>> improved greatly especially in terms of wear-leveling, over-provisioning 
>> etc.. What's a recommended non-disk drive for full pfSense these days?
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
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