Comparative performance analysis of server disk subsystems using SSD. Part II

In the test lab of DEPO Computers , research continues on the performance of disk subsystems in servers. The first part is available by reference .



In the discussion of our previous publications about SSD, many respondents complained about the low resource of the MLC SSD recording, which was the main limitation on the application. This is true, in the previous generation MLC SSD the write resource was at the level of 5-30TB, which may be enough for desktops, but extremely small for servers.



In this review, we present the results of testing the new Intel 710 SSDs with recording resources (depending on the model) from 600 to 1500TB, which is quite enough for most applications.

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The Intel 710 Series 100G SSD with the following configurations was tested:

1. in RAID1 on the LSI 9260 controller with the FASTPAth option turned on and off
2. in RAID1 on ICH10R controller
3. as read / write LSI 9260 controller cache in RAID1 (make the main array on the controller RAID5 on SAS disks, (4 SAS Seagate ST3300657SS 15K disks in RAID5))

The measurements were carried out using the IOmeter program, the horizontal scale is MB / c performance, and the vertical is data for streaming and random reading, streaming and random recording for blocks of different sizes.







(Specified MB / c performance)

Main conclusions

On RAID1: when choosing a controller when configuring RAID1, it is best to use a simple onboard Intel controller, since:

1. The FastPath technology in LSI does not give any gain when using only two SSDs, especially in RAID1.
2. According to the tests, it is clear that on the integrated Intel controller the speed is even slightly higher (although the speed measurements are subjective with SSD tests, due to the internal SSD algorithms, but the fact remains).
3. The price of the LSI 9260 is not commensurate with the cost of the integrated Intel controller. This is a high-performance cache controller with support for different types of RAID, including 6, it is clear that it is not economically viable to use it only as a RAID1 controller, its own cache does not give a significant gain when connecting SSD.

On using LSI CacheCade 2.0 technology (caching when reading and writing using SSD): when using SSD on LSI 9260 as a cache for a volume from SAS disks, very good results were obtained.

1. You can assemble SSD in RAID1 (high availability) or RAID0 (high speed).
2. In addition to READ Cache, WRITE Cache works (and, according to test results, it works very well).
3. The CacheCade 2.0 algorithm is sharp and everything works quite fast compared to the first version.

Since the recording resource of 600-1500TB is sufficient for most applications in the servers, we plan to use the Intel SSD 710-series drives in the new DEPO Storm 3350 models on Intel Xeon E5-2600 processors, which will ship in May 2012.



senko ,

Lead Product Manager DEPO Computers