Re: [U2] Solid State Drives (SSD) and Universe
IMO FusionIO has the best memory-drive devices for small size high volume IOPs. Facebook is one of FusionIO's largest customers. Their devices are not inexpensive but they are solid, fast and the support is great. We barely touch the write capacity of our 80GB board. It's the read speed and r/w IOP capacity that make the difference. EasyCo's MFT solution is a less-expensive alternative but you are still limited by the speed of the SATA bus. I'd consider MFT first and test it out. If that is not going to fulfill your needs, then move up into the memory-drive arena. Regards, Glen Batchelor IT Director/CIO/CTO All-Spec Industries phone: (910) 332-0424 fax: (910) 763-5664 E-mail: webmas...@all-spec.com Web: http://www.all-spec.com Blog: http://blog.all-spec.com > -Original Message- > From: u2-users-boun...@listserver.u2ug.org [mailto:u2-users- > boun...@listserver.u2ug.org] On Behalf Of Mitchell, Stewart > Sent: Monday, December 19, 2011 2:48 AM > To: U2-Users@listserver.u2ug.org > Subject: [U2] Solid State Drives (SSD) and Universe > > Hi All, > > I am interested in the groups opinion on using SSDs with Universe. My > reading leads me to believe there are significant performance improves for > I/O and more specifically random reads in the magnitude of 3,000% (30 > times) faster. > > Does anyone current use SSDs? > > Regards, > > Stewart Mitchell > Business Systems Manager > Symbion IT > Symbion Pty Ltd > > > Effective October 2011 Symbion Pharmacy Services has changed it's name to > Symbion. My email address has changed from @symbionpharmacy.com to > @symbion.com.au. The company's ABN (25 000 875 034) remains the same. > > > This email and any attachments are confidential. They may contain legally > privileged information or copyright material. You should not read, copy, > use or disclose them without authorisation. If you are not an intended > recipient, please contact us at once by return email and then delete the > original message and all copies. We do not accept liability in connection > with computer virus, data corruption, delay, interruption, unauthorised > access or unauthorised amendment. > ___ > U2-Users mailing list > U2-Users@listserver.u2ug.org > http://listserver.u2ug.org/mailman/listinfo/u2-users ___ U2-Users mailing list U2-Users@listserver.u2ug.org http://listserver.u2ug.org/mailman/listinfo/u2-users
Re: [U2] Solid State Drives (SSD) and Universe
I had a simple ScanDisk usb 2.0 memory stick. I thought it would work great and bought a 16GB Cruzer stick. Well, it works fine but when I wanted to move my 5GB "My Documents" directory from the server to the device it would take all night (or it seemed like it - 3.5 hrs)! So there are major limitations to the device when trying to use for something useful, other than a large floppy drive. :-) So I bought a Super-Talent usb 3.0 64GB memory stick and the same directory transferred in about three (3) minutes! So now, I can even load up my Portable Thunderbird application with 7GB of data in five (5) minutes which makes using this topology acceptable. Backup storage even becomes something to review. Hardware and drivers are s important these days. Bill - Original Message - *From:* antli...@youngman.org.uk *To:* u2-users@listserver.u2ug.org *Date:* 12/19/2011 8:39 AM *Subject:* Re: [U2] Solid State Drives (SSD) and Universe On 19/12/11 13:45, John Thompson wrote: 2) Be sure and buy enterpise SSD's. For example, an Intel 320 SSD is probably not an enterprise SSD. The quality of the firmware/drivers and flash memory is pretty key on these things, and the prices range from $200 all the way up to $4,000+ a piece. I'm thinking of memory sticks here, but again it probably applies to cheap SSD drives ... they are often optimised for a FAT filesystem. I've seen reports that using one filesystem on a stick optimised for a different filesystem can write off the entire unit quicker than it's supposed to. It's a bit like the early floppies and hard drives where a load of info was stored in sector 1. Lose that sector to a disk fault and you've just written off the drive, despite the rest of it being perfectly okay (which is one of the reasons hard drives manage their own bad blocks today). Wear out the wrong sectors on your stick and you're similarly hosed. Cheers, Wol ___ U2-Users mailing list U2-Users@listserver.u2ug.org http://listserver.u2ug.org/mailman/listinfo/u2-users
Re: [U2] Solid State Drives (SSD) and Universe
On 19/12/11 13:45, John Thompson wrote: 2) Be sure and buy enterpise SSD's. For example, an Intel 320 SSD is probably not an enterprise SSD. The quality of the firmware/drivers and flash memory is pretty key on these things, and the prices range from $200 all the way up to $4,000+ a piece. I'm thinking of memory sticks here, but again it probably applies to cheap SSD drives ... they are often optimised for a FAT filesystem. I've seen reports that using one filesystem on a stick optimised for a different filesystem can write off the entire unit quicker than it's supposed to. It's a bit like the early floppies and hard drives where a load of info was stored in sector 1. Lose that sector to a disk fault and you've just written off the drive, despite the rest of it being perfectly okay (which is one of the reasons hard drives manage their own bad blocks today). Wear out the wrong sectors on your stick and you're similarly hosed. Cheers, Wol ___ U2-Users mailing list U2-Users@listserver.u2ug.org http://listserver.u2ug.org/mailman/listinfo/u2-users
Re: [U2] Solid State Drives (SSD) and Universe
+1 for easyco's SSD stuff. I have worked with it on smaller implementations. It works very well. The same should apply on anything large. In a nutshell, their stuff I believe takes the random reads and writes at the OS level and turns them into sequential reads and writes, which is faster and creates less wear on the drive. On Mon, Dec 19, 2011 at 9:38 AM, Martin Phillips < martinphill...@ladybridge.com> wrote: > Hi, > > Take a look at > http://www.easyco.com/index.**htm<http://www.easyco.com/index.htm>. > The performance of these devices is amazing plus they are much lower cost > than the usual SSD alternatives. > > We have users running these who may be willing to give an unbiased opinion. > > > Martin Phillips > Ladybridge Systems Ltd > 17b Coldstream Lane, Hardingstone, Northampton NN4 6DB, England > +44 (0)1604-709200 > > > > -Original Message- From: John Thompson > Sent: Monday, December 19, 2011 1:45 PM > To: U2 Users List > Subject: Re: [U2] Solid State Drives (SSD) and Universe > > > I am currently attempting to as we speak, but, I don't have any hard > numbers for you. > I have some numbers from a benchmark tool, but, there are so many factors > involved, I can't really tell you whether U2 performance is 30 times > faster... Although I'm hoping this week I can get Universe installed and > run through some jobs to see. > > The tool on RHEL 6 is telling me that on using the "sync" io engine, that > random reads are 30 times faster, and, random writes are 60 times faster, > which I find funny. BUT, I'm no expert on which io engine Universe uses > (sync, libaio, posixaio, etc. etc.) > > In my case, I don't work for that big of a company, but, IBM was offering a > 40% rebate on some of their solid stuff in October, and our AIX support was > slated to end in April. That being said though, if you are the guy that > has to research the hardware, I'll give you these pointers that I have > learned painfully... > > If you are running on an x86 machine (intel-ish), keep in mind these > points: > > 1) There are a couple of different types of solid state drives. > -SATA, SAS attached to an actual disk controller > (These are limited by the throughput on the disk controller, which they > will quickly eclipse) > -PCIe (PCI Express) that plug directly into the PCIe bus of the system > (These are not limited by a disk controller and communicate almost directly > with the CPU/RAM/bus) > > The PCIe are not bootable however, but, they bypass the latency of a > traditional disk controller, and are even faster. > They do come with the added complication of proprietary drivers, so if you > don't get good support for this, things can get painful. > > 2) Be sure and buy enterpise SSD's. For example, an Intel 320 SSD is > probably not an enterprise SSD. The quality of the firmware/drivers and > flash memory is pretty key on these things, and the prices range from $200 > all the way up to $4,000+ a piece. > Basically, just do your homework on what the predicted life of the drive > is. Don't always pay attention to warranty or hours. Its more about, "How > much data in GB can I write to this thing before it wears out." > Also the cheap ones really fall short on random write performance which I > think is important in a U2 database. > > 3) Make sure its in your budget. They are still at least double or triple > the price of spindle disks (for the enterprise grade stuff). However, the > performance is more than double/triple, so, the cost justifies itself. > > I think IBM has some SSD's offerings for their new POWER 7 AIX machines as > well. > > Now for some more specific Vendor advice, as a result of some of my pain I > have experienced the last month or so. > > If you go with one of the big boys for a RHEL (Linux) or Windows server, > here is some useful info. > > IBM and HP (not sure about Dell) offers mainly two types of SSD's > The traditional SATA ones > http://www.redbooks.ibm.com/**abstracts/tips0792.html<http://www.redbooks.ibm.com/abstracts/tips0792.html> > > The PCIe Ones > http://www.redbooks.ibm.com/**technotes/tips0729.pdf<http://www.redbooks.ibm.com/technotes/tips0729.pdf> > > *Be careful about how you hook up the traditional SATA ones.* > > My so called "Vendor" was supposed to do all of this "checking" for me, > but, they dropped the ball big time. > > IBM has a list of controllers that are compatible with certain machines. > http://www-03.ibm.com/systems/**info/x86servers/serverproven/** > compat/us/xseries/controllers/**matrix.html<http://www-03.ibm.com/systems/info/x86servers/se
Re: [U2] Solid State Drives (SSD) and Universe
Another option is replacing the drives with faster drives. When I was last shopping for drives, I noticed that they have some 20,000rpm drives out now That with a good SAS controller that can handle the onslaught of data on it's bus Or possibly, using multiple disk controllers with faster drives, then stripe the drives Using software, so this way you can move even more data across with multiple control buses Even if the controller can read really fast from the drive, can it get that data to the CPU that fast...that is usually where the slow down occurs, but using multiple controllers, You can help get around that -Original Message- From: u2-users-boun...@listserver.u2ug.org [mailto:u2-users-boun...@listserver.u2ug.org] On Behalf Of Horacio Pellegrino Sent: Monday, December 19, 2011 10:01 AM To: U2 Users List Subject: Re: [U2] Solid State Drives (SSD) and Universe You will need to consider that a RAM disk will use way more CPU, specially in a multiuser environment. So that process that took forever it will run faster, but you might be at risk of not leaving enough CPU power for the rest. We use Ram drives but not for everything. hp On Mon, Dec 19, 2011 at 9:54 AM, Symeon Breen wrote: > I think the first thing you need to assess tho is - is it the diskio that > is > the bottleneck - if you have a *nix system with plenty of ram, you get a > decent disk cache in ram. Analyse your wait on io stats for your > processors, > if this is higher than your actual cpu utilisation then you do have a disk > bottleneck, Otherwise you may be better off getting better/more processors. > > > > > -Original Message- > From: u2-users-boun...@listserver.u2ug.org > [mailto:u2-users-boun...@listserver.u2ug.org] On Behalf Of John Thompson > Sent: 19 December 2011 13:45 > To: U2 Users List > Subject: Re: [U2] Solid State Drives (SSD) and Universe > > I am currently attempting to as we speak, but, I don't have any hard > numbers > for you. > I have some numbers from a benchmark tool, but, there are so many factors > involved, I can't really tell you whether U2 performance is 30 times > faster... Although I'm hoping this week I can get Universe installed and > run > through some jobs to see. > > The tool on RHEL 6 is telling me that on using the "sync" io engine, that > random reads are 30 times faster, and, random writes are 60 times faster, > which I find funny. BUT, I'm no expert on which io engine Universe uses > (sync, libaio, posixaio, etc. etc.) > > In my case, I don't work for that big of a company, but, IBM was offering a > 40% rebate on some of their solid stuff in October, and our AIX support was > slated to end in April. That being said though, if you are the guy that > has > to research the hardware, I'll give you these pointers that I have learned > painfully... > > If you are running on an x86 machine (intel-ish), keep in mind these > points: > > 1) There are a couple of different types of solid state drives. > -SATA, SAS attached to an actual disk controller (These are limited by the > throughput on the disk controller, which they will quickly eclipse) -PCIe > (PCI Express) that plug directly into the PCIe bus of the system (These are > not limited by a disk controller and communicate almost directly with the > CPU/RAM/bus) > > The PCIe are not bootable however, but, they bypass the latency of a > traditional disk controller, and are even faster. > They do come with the added complication of proprietary drivers, so if you > don't get good support for this, things can get painful. > > 2) Be sure and buy enterpise SSD's. For example, an Intel 320 SSD is > probably not an enterprise SSD. The quality of the firmware/drivers and > flash memory is pretty key on these things, and the prices range from $200 > all the way up to $4,000+ a piece. > Basically, just do your homework on what the predicted life of the drive > is. > Don't always pay attention to warranty or hours. Its more about, "How much > data in GB can I write to this thing before it wears out." > Also the cheap ones really fall short on random write performance which I > think is important in a U2 database. > > 3) Make sure its in your budget. They are still at least double or triple > the price of spindle disks (for the enterprise grade stuff). However, the > performance is more than double/triple, so, the cost justifies itself. > > I think IBM has some SSD's offerings for their new POWER 7 AIX machines as > well. > > Now for some more specific Vendor advice, as a result of some of my pain I > have experienced the last month or so. > > If you go with one of the big boys for a RHEL (Linux) or Windows server, >
Re: [U2] Solid State Drives (SSD) and Universe
You will need to consider that a RAM disk will use way more CPU, specially in a multiuser environment. So that process that took forever it will run faster, but you might be at risk of not leaving enough CPU power for the rest. We use Ram drives but not for everything. hp On Mon, Dec 19, 2011 at 9:54 AM, Symeon Breen wrote: > I think the first thing you need to assess tho is - is it the diskio that > is > the bottleneck - if you have a *nix system with plenty of ram, you get a > decent disk cache in ram. Analyse your wait on io stats for your > processors, > if this is higher than your actual cpu utilisation then you do have a disk > bottleneck, Otherwise you may be better off getting better/more processors. > > > > > -Original Message- > From: u2-users-boun...@listserver.u2ug.org > [mailto:u2-users-boun...@listserver.u2ug.org] On Behalf Of John Thompson > Sent: 19 December 2011 13:45 > To: U2 Users List > Subject: Re: [U2] Solid State Drives (SSD) and Universe > > I am currently attempting to as we speak, but, I don't have any hard > numbers > for you. > I have some numbers from a benchmark tool, but, there are so many factors > involved, I can't really tell you whether U2 performance is 30 times > faster... Although I'm hoping this week I can get Universe installed and > run > through some jobs to see. > > The tool on RHEL 6 is telling me that on using the "sync" io engine, that > random reads are 30 times faster, and, random writes are 60 times faster, > which I find funny. BUT, I'm no expert on which io engine Universe uses > (sync, libaio, posixaio, etc. etc.) > > In my case, I don't work for that big of a company, but, IBM was offering a > 40% rebate on some of their solid stuff in October, and our AIX support was > slated to end in April. That being said though, if you are the guy that > has > to research the hardware, I'll give you these pointers that I have learned > painfully... > > If you are running on an x86 machine (intel-ish), keep in mind these > points: > > 1) There are a couple of different types of solid state drives. > -SATA, SAS attached to an actual disk controller (These are limited by the > throughput on the disk controller, which they will quickly eclipse) -PCIe > (PCI Express) that plug directly into the PCIe bus of the system (These are > not limited by a disk controller and communicate almost directly with the > CPU/RAM/bus) > > The PCIe are not bootable however, but, they bypass the latency of a > traditional disk controller, and are even faster. > They do come with the added complication of proprietary drivers, so if you > don't get good support for this, things can get painful. > > 2) Be sure and buy enterpise SSD's. For example, an Intel 320 SSD is > probably not an enterprise SSD. The quality of the firmware/drivers and > flash memory is pretty key on these things, and the prices range from $200 > all the way up to $4,000+ a piece. > Basically, just do your homework on what the predicted life of the drive > is. > Don't always pay attention to warranty or hours. Its more about, "How much > data in GB can I write to this thing before it wears out." > Also the cheap ones really fall short on random write performance which I > think is important in a U2 database. > > 3) Make sure its in your budget. They are still at least double or triple > the price of spindle disks (for the enterprise grade stuff). However, the > performance is more than double/triple, so, the cost justifies itself. > > I think IBM has some SSD's offerings for their new POWER 7 AIX machines as > well. > > Now for some more specific Vendor advice, as a result of some of my pain I > have experienced the last month or so. > > If you go with one of the big boys for a RHEL (Linux) or Windows server, > here is some useful info. > > IBM and HP (not sure about Dell) offers mainly two types of SSD's The > traditional SATA ones http://www.redbooks.ibm.com/abstracts/tips0792.html > > The PCIe Ones > http://www.redbooks.ibm.com/technotes/tips0729.pdf > > *Be careful about how you hook up the traditional SATA ones.* My so called > "Vendor" was supposed to do all of this "checking" for me, but, they > dropped > the ball big time. > > IBM has a list of controllers that are compatible with certain machines. > > http://www-03.ibm.com/systems/info/x86servers/serverproven/compat/us/xseries > /controllers/matrix.html > So make sure that matches up. I'm sure HP, has a similar posting > somewhere. > > THEN, make sure the controller can support SSD's. > SSD's behave way differently than regular disks, so,
Re: [U2] Solid State Drives (SSD) and Universe
I think the first thing you need to assess tho is - is it the diskio that is the bottleneck - if you have a *nix system with plenty of ram, you get a decent disk cache in ram. Analyse your wait on io stats for your processors, if this is higher than your actual cpu utilisation then you do have a disk bottleneck, Otherwise you may be better off getting better/more processors. -Original Message- From: u2-users-boun...@listserver.u2ug.org [mailto:u2-users-boun...@listserver.u2ug.org] On Behalf Of John Thompson Sent: 19 December 2011 13:45 To: U2 Users List Subject: Re: [U2] Solid State Drives (SSD) and Universe I am currently attempting to as we speak, but, I don't have any hard numbers for you. I have some numbers from a benchmark tool, but, there are so many factors involved, I can't really tell you whether U2 performance is 30 times faster... Although I'm hoping this week I can get Universe installed and run through some jobs to see. The tool on RHEL 6 is telling me that on using the "sync" io engine, that random reads are 30 times faster, and, random writes are 60 times faster, which I find funny. BUT, I'm no expert on which io engine Universe uses (sync, libaio, posixaio, etc. etc.) In my case, I don't work for that big of a company, but, IBM was offering a 40% rebate on some of their solid stuff in October, and our AIX support was slated to end in April. That being said though, if you are the guy that has to research the hardware, I'll give you these pointers that I have learned painfully... If you are running on an x86 machine (intel-ish), keep in mind these points: 1) There are a couple of different types of solid state drives. -SATA, SAS attached to an actual disk controller (These are limited by the throughput on the disk controller, which they will quickly eclipse) -PCIe (PCI Express) that plug directly into the PCIe bus of the system (These are not limited by a disk controller and communicate almost directly with the CPU/RAM/bus) The PCIe are not bootable however, but, they bypass the latency of a traditional disk controller, and are even faster. They do come with the added complication of proprietary drivers, so if you don't get good support for this, things can get painful. 2) Be sure and buy enterpise SSD's. For example, an Intel 320 SSD is probably not an enterprise SSD. The quality of the firmware/drivers and flash memory is pretty key on these things, and the prices range from $200 all the way up to $4,000+ a piece. Basically, just do your homework on what the predicted life of the drive is. Don't always pay attention to warranty or hours. Its more about, "How much data in GB can I write to this thing before it wears out." Also the cheap ones really fall short on random write performance which I think is important in a U2 database. 3) Make sure its in your budget. They are still at least double or triple the price of spindle disks (for the enterprise grade stuff). However, the performance is more than double/triple, so, the cost justifies itself. I think IBM has some SSD's offerings for their new POWER 7 AIX machines as well. Now for some more specific Vendor advice, as a result of some of my pain I have experienced the last month or so. If you go with one of the big boys for a RHEL (Linux) or Windows server, here is some useful info. IBM and HP (not sure about Dell) offers mainly two types of SSD's The traditional SATA ones http://www.redbooks.ibm.com/abstracts/tips0792.html The PCIe Ones http://www.redbooks.ibm.com/technotes/tips0729.pdf *Be careful about how you hook up the traditional SATA ones.* My so called "Vendor" was supposed to do all of this "checking" for me, but, they dropped the ball big time. IBM has a list of controllers that are compatible with certain machines. http://www-03.ibm.com/systems/info/x86servers/serverproven/compat/us/xseries /controllers/matrix.html So make sure that matches up. I'm sure HP, has a similar posting somewhere. THEN, make sure the controller can support SSD's. SSD's behave way differently than regular disks, so, IF you want to use a hardware RAID controller or something of the like, you must make sure it is intelligent enough to handle the SSD's. OR you can just hook it up to an HBA (Host bus adapter) with no actual intelligence, and then let the OS handle how it deals with the SSD's (i.e. software RAID, lvm, etc.) If you know Linux lvm, RAID, or Windows disk management, this might be the best approach for you. *Be wary of the vendor you buy the PCIe SSD's from* Like I said, IBM offered 40% off of these guys a month or two ago, but, their support people don't know a #$%^$## thing about them. The company that makes these things for HP, IBM, and I think Dell is called Fusion IO: They just went public on the stock market not too long ago. http://www.fusionio.com/platforms/iodrive/
Re: [U2] Solid State Drives (SSD) and Universe
Hi, Take a look at http://www.easyco.com/index.htm. The performance of these devices is amazing plus they are much lower cost than the usual SSD alternatives. We have users running these who may be willing to give an unbiased opinion. Martin Phillips Ladybridge Systems Ltd 17b Coldstream Lane, Hardingstone, Northampton NN4 6DB, England +44 (0)1604-709200 -Original Message- From: John Thompson Sent: Monday, December 19, 2011 1:45 PM To: U2 Users List Subject: Re: [U2] Solid State Drives (SSD) and Universe I am currently attempting to as we speak, but, I don't have any hard numbers for you. I have some numbers from a benchmark tool, but, there are so many factors involved, I can't really tell you whether U2 performance is 30 times faster... Although I'm hoping this week I can get Universe installed and run through some jobs to see. The tool on RHEL 6 is telling me that on using the "sync" io engine, that random reads are 30 times faster, and, random writes are 60 times faster, which I find funny. BUT, I'm no expert on which io engine Universe uses (sync, libaio, posixaio, etc. etc.) In my case, I don't work for that big of a company, but, IBM was offering a 40% rebate on some of their solid stuff in October, and our AIX support was slated to end in April. That being said though, if you are the guy that has to research the hardware, I'll give you these pointers that I have learned painfully... If you are running on an x86 machine (intel-ish), keep in mind these points: 1) There are a couple of different types of solid state drives. -SATA, SAS attached to an actual disk controller (These are limited by the throughput on the disk controller, which they will quickly eclipse) -PCIe (PCI Express) that plug directly into the PCIe bus of the system (These are not limited by a disk controller and communicate almost directly with the CPU/RAM/bus) The PCIe are not bootable however, but, they bypass the latency of a traditional disk controller, and are even faster. They do come with the added complication of proprietary drivers, so if you don't get good support for this, things can get painful. 2) Be sure and buy enterpise SSD's. For example, an Intel 320 SSD is probably not an enterprise SSD. The quality of the firmware/drivers and flash memory is pretty key on these things, and the prices range from $200 all the way up to $4,000+ a piece. Basically, just do your homework on what the predicted life of the drive is. Don't always pay attention to warranty or hours. Its more about, "How much data in GB can I write to this thing before it wears out." Also the cheap ones really fall short on random write performance which I think is important in a U2 database. 3) Make sure its in your budget. They are still at least double or triple the price of spindle disks (for the enterprise grade stuff). However, the performance is more than double/triple, so, the cost justifies itself. I think IBM has some SSD's offerings for their new POWER 7 AIX machines as well. Now for some more specific Vendor advice, as a result of some of my pain I have experienced the last month or so. If you go with one of the big boys for a RHEL (Linux) or Windows server, here is some useful info. IBM and HP (not sure about Dell) offers mainly two types of SSD's The traditional SATA ones http://www.redbooks.ibm.com/abstracts/tips0792.html The PCIe Ones http://www.redbooks.ibm.com/technotes/tips0729.pdf *Be careful about how you hook up the traditional SATA ones.* My so called "Vendor" was supposed to do all of this "checking" for me, but, they dropped the ball big time. IBM has a list of controllers that are compatible with certain machines. http://www-03.ibm.com/systems/info/x86servers/serverproven/compat/us/xseries/controllers/matrix.html So make sure that matches up. I'm sure HP, has a similar posting somewhere. THEN, make sure the controller can support SSD's. SSD's behave way differently than regular disks, so, IF you want to use a hardware RAID controller or something of the like, you must make sure it is intelligent enough to handle the SSD's. OR you can just hook it up to an HBA (Host bus adapter) with no actual intelligence, and then let the OS handle how it deals with the SSD's (i.e. software RAID, lvm, etc.) If you know Linux lvm, RAID, or Windows disk management, this might be the best approach for you. *Be wary of the vendor you buy the PCIe SSD's from* Like I said, IBM offered 40% off of these guys a month or two ago, but, their support people don't know a #$%^$## thing about them. The company that makes these things for HP, IBM, and I think Dell is called Fusion IO: They just went public on the stock market not too long ago. http://www.fusionio.com/platforms/iodrive/ HOWEVER, they have a non compete agreement with IBM, that states that any IBM branded card, they
Re: [U2] Solid State Drives (SSD) and Universe
I am currently attempting to as we speak, but, I don't have any hard numbers for you. I have some numbers from a benchmark tool, but, there are so many factors involved, I can't really tell you whether U2 performance is 30 times faster... Although I'm hoping this week I can get Universe installed and run through some jobs to see. The tool on RHEL 6 is telling me that on using the "sync" io engine, that random reads are 30 times faster, and, random writes are 60 times faster, which I find funny. BUT, I'm no expert on which io engine Universe uses (sync, libaio, posixaio, etc. etc.) In my case, I don't work for that big of a company, but, IBM was offering a 40% rebate on some of their solid stuff in October, and our AIX support was slated to end in April. That being said though, if you are the guy that has to research the hardware, I'll give you these pointers that I have learned painfully... If you are running on an x86 machine (intel-ish), keep in mind these points: 1) There are a couple of different types of solid state drives. -SATA, SAS attached to an actual disk controller (These are limited by the throughput on the disk controller, which they will quickly eclipse) -PCIe (PCI Express) that plug directly into the PCIe bus of the system (These are not limited by a disk controller and communicate almost directly with the CPU/RAM/bus) The PCIe are not bootable however, but, they bypass the latency of a traditional disk controller, and are even faster. They do come with the added complication of proprietary drivers, so if you don't get good support for this, things can get painful. 2) Be sure and buy enterpise SSD's. For example, an Intel 320 SSD is probably not an enterprise SSD. The quality of the firmware/drivers and flash memory is pretty key on these things, and the prices range from $200 all the way up to $4,000+ a piece. Basically, just do your homework on what the predicted life of the drive is. Don't always pay attention to warranty or hours. Its more about, "How much data in GB can I write to this thing before it wears out." Also the cheap ones really fall short on random write performance which I think is important in a U2 database. 3) Make sure its in your budget. They are still at least double or triple the price of spindle disks (for the enterprise grade stuff). However, the performance is more than double/triple, so, the cost justifies itself. I think IBM has some SSD's offerings for their new POWER 7 AIX machines as well. Now for some more specific Vendor advice, as a result of some of my pain I have experienced the last month or so. If you go with one of the big boys for a RHEL (Linux) or Windows server, here is some useful info. IBM and HP (not sure about Dell) offers mainly two types of SSD's The traditional SATA ones http://www.redbooks.ibm.com/abstracts/tips0792.html The PCIe Ones http://www.redbooks.ibm.com/technotes/tips0729.pdf *Be careful about how you hook up the traditional SATA ones.* My so called "Vendor" was supposed to do all of this "checking" for me, but, they dropped the ball big time. IBM has a list of controllers that are compatible with certain machines. http://www-03.ibm.com/systems/info/x86servers/serverproven/compat/us/xseries/controllers/matrix.html So make sure that matches up. I'm sure HP, has a similar posting somewhere. THEN, make sure the controller can support SSD's. SSD's behave way differently than regular disks, so, IF you want to use a hardware RAID controller or something of the like, you must make sure it is intelligent enough to handle the SSD's. OR you can just hook it up to an HBA (Host bus adapter) with no actual intelligence, and then let the OS handle how it deals with the SSD's (i.e. software RAID, lvm, etc.) If you know Linux lvm, RAID, or Windows disk management, this might be the best approach for you. *Be wary of the vendor you buy the PCIe SSD's from* Like I said, IBM offered 40% off of these guys a month or two ago, but, their support people don't know a #$%^$## thing about them. The company that makes these things for HP, IBM, and I think Dell is called Fusion IO: They just went public on the stock market not too long ago. http://www.fusionio.com/platforms/iodrive/ HOWEVER, they have a non compete agreement with IBM, that states that any IBM branded card, they cannot support, EVEN though, they are the exact same stinking thing. So... if its in your budget to get these cards. Just buy it direct from Fusion IO, or buy a card that is Fusion "branded" Believe me, you will save yourself a LOT of headache. Other than the newness of it all, there is great potential from what I see. One of these little fusion io cards, can outperform an entire SAN of spindle disks for a fraction of the price. The traditional SATA SSD's aren't too shabby either. But, its all if the money is there and if you are willing to go through a learning curve (especially if you are the guy having to deal with the Operating System setup). Once
