Edit: I cannot remember the last time I did not run SSD in my laptops. Some links no longer work.
Originally posted October 5, 2010 on AIXchange
I’ve been meaning to touch on one other aspect of the recent Power Systems announcements — that being the new solid-state drive (SSD) disk modules.
The new SSD modules are about the same size as a thick credit card. And, according to slides I’ve seen, compared to the 69GB SSD, the new modules give you a better per GB cost, more dense physical packaging and 50 percent less energy and heat per drive, with comparable performance.
As I’ve noted, filemon (filemon -O hot -A -x “sleep 20” -r fmon -o fmon.out) can help us identify which filesystems and physical and logical volumes should be moved to SSD drives and determine the proper physical locations for these relocated files.
If you’re just starting to gather information about SSD technology, IBM offers some good introductory material. In particular check out the SSD vs. hard-disk drives comparison.
From IBM:
“Also known as Flash technology, solid-state drive technology eliminates the rotational delay of a spinning platter and of waiting for an arm to move to the correct position. Thus, data is available nearly immediately. Dramatically reducing crippling I/O bottlenecks, an SSD provides 33X to 125X more I/O Operations Per Second (IOPS) than a HDD and works at speeds much closer to those of memory, bridging the HDD performance gap. SSDs are also more efficient than HDD. While SSD operates close to 100 percent capacity, HDD is often limited to 20-50 percent storage capacity in an effort to improve responsiveness.”
There’s also a comparison of internal storage solutions and storage area networks (SANs) as well as a rundown of older SSD disk options, including SAS-connected 69 GB drives and the new double-wide PCIe card which can house up to four 177GB SSD eMLC disk modules.
Again, from IBM:
“eMLC technology stands for “Enterprise Multi-Level Cell” Flash memory technology. IBM is the first server vendor to provide this new SSD technology option which blends enterprise class performance and reliability characteristics with the more cost effective characteristics of MLC Flash storage.”
Here’s one more quote from IBM that I agree with wholeheartedly: “Remember, it’s not a question of if solid-state drives will be part of your computer center, but rather, when.”
Finally, revisit this post, which references Nigel Griffiths’ SSD demonstration video.