Apr 24, 2009

Plans for SSD?

The question for the week is simple enough:

Are you planning to use solid state drives for your database servers in the next twelve months?

We are getting more involved with a server consolidation project here. As part of that project we are looking to build out an updated server environment. Part of that new “dream home” will include virtualization to some degree. One of the things to be aware of when virtualizing servers is the placement of tempdb. So, I had the crazy idea that it would be great if we could someone use a shared SSD to handle all of tempdb for a four way box. After all, SSD’s are supposed to be more than four times faster than a regular drive, right?

If you have done any testing of SSD’s, let me know. I would love to learn more about how people plan to use them in their shop, if at all.

sqlrockstar Asides, Question of the Week 6

http://sqlblog.com/blogs/aaron_bertrand/ Aaron Bertrand

I’m not convinced that write performance on SSDs will hold up to heavy tempdb usage. Anyway our budget for new hardware is frozen, so I am hoping that none of our existing stuff breaks down, never mind upgrading.
http://sqlblog.com/blogs/aaron_bertrand/ Aaron Bertrand

I have no idea where that smiley came from.
http://www.sqlasylum.com Pat Wright

We have been looking into this. Haven’t done a ton of testing but would like to get my hands on some to get real numbers. I would check out Fusion-IO another option in the form of a card for the server.

http://www.fusionio.com/

Pat
Sarah Barela

I want to use them for my next generation SQL Servers for tran logs, but I can’t find a vendor who can do a mixed drive SAN that does not start at $100,000. We ran the numbers and to get our needed IO it would cost far less to use SSD drives, but they need to be in shared storage and that costs a fortune.
http://www.pablowe.net/ Ryan Lowe

No way in the next year:

1) SQL Server, Oracle, MySQL+InnoDB will all *destroy* the lifespan of any SSD. Each block can handle ~10k modification operations … which is *nothing* in a high-traffic operation.
2) There exists no filesystem optimized for SSDs
3) There exists no RAID hardware optimized for SSDs.

I’ll wait for the rest of the supporting hardware stack to catch up!
http://www.pablowe.net/ Ryan Lowe

@pat

Fusion-IO has 18k blocks, which cause multiple (and partial) pages to be written … the performance is only okay. They could do much better for the price.