[TriLUG] SSD-based NFS servers for production - ready for primetime?

Jim Ray jim at neuse.net
Sun Jan 15 20:50:37 EST 2012


We have Intel SSD in production servers and are well pleased.

Regards,

Jim Ray
President

2 Davis Drive, PO Box 13169
Research Triangle Park, NC 27709

main:	919-838-1672
cell:	919-606-1772
skype:	neusedotnet
email:	jim at neuse.net
web:	www.NeuseRiverNetworks.com

ONE(tm) Plan to put IT maintenance behind the scenes, after-hours and
out of your way since 1997 with Service Representatives Available
24/7/365

Customer Service/Support: Send email to support at neuse.net or log on to
our web portal http://support.neuse.net



-----Original Message-----
From: trilug-bounces at trilug.org [mailto:trilug-bounces at trilug.org] On
Behalf Of Ron Kelley
Sent: Sunday, January 15, 2012 1:08 PM
To: Triangle General Discussion
Subject: [TriLUG] SSD-based NFS servers for production - ready for
primetime?

Greetings all,

I need to add some NFS horsepower to our production network and find
myself at a crossroads.  Our current NFS servers each have 8x Seagate
1TB 7200-RPM SATA drives hooked to Areca ARC1220 controllers.  They have
been very stable/reliable over the past few years but the drives are
starting to die off (3-4yrs @ 24/7 operation).  In addition, we have
added more NFS clients to the mix (combination of ESX servers and CentOS
clients) which has pushed the NFS servers to the point of I/O
starvation.

I have been scouring the 'net looking for information about spinning
drives vs SSDs in an enterprise NFS deployment.  After a ton of
research, I am torn between the 10K-RPM/15KRPM 2.5" Seagate drives and
the Intel 510 SSDs.  The SSDs would certainly fix the performance issue,
but I am concerned they won't last as long especially given the large
number of writes our NFS servers perform.  I know the 510s are not
"enterprise grade" SSDs, but Anandtech and Tom's hardware has some very
glowing reviews for them.  Here is a good link to a Tom's article from
July 2011 about SSD reliability:
http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/ssd-reliability-failure-rate,2923.ht
ml 

As for the configuration, I will put them in a 6-drive RAID-5 array
using Linux software RAID.  If a drive fails, we can easily swap it out
with another spare on the shelf.  And, as for space, we need about 1.5T
of usable NFS space to store VMDKs and other high-sensitive items.  

Does anyone have an opinion or real-life experience as to the
reliability of SSD drives in an enterprise setting? 



Thanks,

-----------------------------
Ron Kelley
rkelleyrtp at gmail.com

--
This message was sent to: Jim Ray <jim at neuse.net> To unsubscribe, send a
blank message to trilug-leave at trilug.org from that address.
TriLUG mailing list : http://www.trilug.org/mailman/listinfo/trilug
Unsubscribe or edit options on the web	:
http://www.trilug.org/mailman/options/trilug/jim%40neuse.net
TriLUG FAQ          :
http://www.trilug.org/wiki/Frequently_Asked_Questions



More information about the TriLUG mailing list