Inaugural episode of the SSD Show podcast at Myce.com

Storage I/O trends

Inaugural episode of the SSD Show podcast at Myce.com

The other day I was invited by Jeremy Reynolds and J.W. Aldershoff to be a guest on the Inaugural episode of their new SSD Show podcast (click here to learn more or listen in).

audio

Many different facets or faces of nand flash SSD and SSHD or HHDD

With this first episode we discuss the latest developments in and around the solid-state device (SSD) and related storage industry, from consumer to enterprise, hardware and software, along with hands on experience insight on products, trends, technologies, technique themes. In this first podcast we discuss Solid State Hybrid Disks (SSHDs) aka Hybrid Hard Disk Drives (HHDD) with flash (read about some of my SSD, HHDD/SSHD hands on personal experiences here), the state of NAND memory (also here about nand DIMMs), the market and SSD pricing.

I had a lot of fun doing this first episode with Jeremy and hope to be invited back to do some more, follow-up on themes we discussed along with new ones in future episodes. One question remains after the podcast, will I convince Jeremy to get a Twitter account? Stay tuned!

Check out the new SSD Show podcast here.

Ok, nuff said (for now)

Cheers
Gs

Greg Schulz – Author Cloud and Virtual Data Storage Networking (CRC Press), The Green and Virtual Data Center (CRC Press) and Resilient Storage Networks (Elsevier)

More Storage IO momentus HHDD and SSD moments part II

This follows the first of a two-part series on my latest experiences with Hybrid Hard Disk Drives (HHDD’s) and Solid State Devices (SSD’s). In my ongoing last momentus moment post I discussed what I have done with HHDD’s and setting the stage for expanded SSD use. I have the newer HHDD’s, e.g. Seagate Momentus XT II 750GB (8GB SLC nand flash) installed and have since bought another from Amazon as well as having some of the older 500GB (4GB SLC nand flash) in various systems. Those are all functioning great, however still waiting and looking forward to the rumored firmware enhancements to boost write capabilities.

This brings me up to the latest momentus moment which now includes SSD’s.

Well its two years later and I now have a 256GB (usable capacity is lower) Samsung SSD that I bought from Amazon.com and installed in one of my laptops and just as when I made the first switch to HHDD’s, I also have a backup copy/clone to fall back to in case of emergency.

Was it worth the wait? Yes, particularly using the HHDD’s to bridge the gap and enable some productivity gain which more than paid for them based on some different projects. I’m already seeing productivity improvements that will make future upgrades more easy to justify (to myself).

I deviated from my strategy a bit and installed the SSD about six months earlier than I was planning to do so because of a physical barrier. That physical barrier was my new traveling laptop only accepts 7mm height 2.5 inch small form factor devices and the 750GB HHDD that I had planned on installing was 2.5mm to thick which pushed up the SSD installation.

What will become of the 750GB HHDD? Its being redeployed to help speed up file serving, backups and other functions.

Will I replace the HHDD’s in my other workstations and laptops now with SSD’s? Across the board no, not yet, however there is one other system that is a prime candidate to maybe upgrade in a month or two (maybe less).

Will I stick with the Samsung SSD’s or look at other options? I’m keeping my options open and using this as a gauge to test and compare other options in a real world working environment as opposed to a lab bench test simulation. In other words, taking the next step past the lab test and product reviews, gaining comfort and confidence and then trying out with real use activity.

What will happen in the future as I install more SSD’s and have surplus HHDD’s? Redeployed them of course into file or NAS servers, backup targets that in turn will replace HDD’s that will either get retired, or redeployed to replace older, smaller capacity, higher cost to handle HDD’s used for offsite protection.

I tried using the software that came with the SSD to do the cloning and should have known better, however wanted to see what the latest version of ghost was like (it was a waste of time to be polite). Instead I used Seagate Discwizard (aka Acronis) which requires at least one Seagate product (source or target) for cloning.

Cloning from the Seagate HHDD that have been previously cloned from the Hitachi HDD that came with the laptop, was a none issue. However, I wanted to see what would happen if I attached the Samsung SSD to the Seagate Goflex cable and clone directly from the Hitachi HDD, it worked. Hence another reason to have some of the Seagate Goflex cables (USB and eSATA) like the ones I bought at Amazon.com around in your toolbox.

While I do not have concrete empirical numbers to share, cloning from a HDD to a SSD is shall we say fast, however, what’s really fun to watch is cloning from a HHDD to a SSD using an eSata (GoFlex) connector adapter. The reason I say that it is fun is that you don’t have to sit and wait for hours, it’s not minutes to move 100s of GBs, however you can very much see the progress bar move at a good pace.

Also, I put the HHDD on an eSata port and try that out as a backup or data dump target if you have the need for speed, capacity and cost effectiveness, yes its fast, has lots of capacity and so forth. Now if Seagate and Synology or EMC Iomega would get their acts together and add support for the HHDD’s in those different unified SMB and SOHO NAS solutions, that would be way cool.

Will I be racing to put SSD’s in my other laptops or workstations soon? Probably not as there are things in the works and working their way into and through the market place that I wanted to wait for, and thus will wait for now, that is unless a more interesting opportunity pops up.

Related links on SDD, HHDD and HDD
More Storage IO momentus HHDD and SSD moments part I
More Storage IO momentus HHDD and SSD moments part II
IO IO it is off to Storage and IO metrics we go
New Seagate Momentus XT Hybrid drive (SSD and HDD)
Other Momentus moments posts here here, here, here and here
SSD and Storage System Performance
Speaking of speeding up business with SSD storage
Are Hard Disk Drives (HDD’s) getting too big?
Has SSD put Hard Disk Drives (HDD’s) On Endangered Species List?
Why SSD based arrays and storage appliances can be a good idea (Part I)
Why SSD based arrays and storage appliances can be a good idea (Part II)
IT and storage economics 101, supply and demand
Researchers and marketers dont agree on future of nand flash SSD
EMC VFCache respinning SSD and intelligent caching (Part I)
EMC VFCache respinning SSD and intelligent caching (Part II)
SSD options for Virtual (and Physical) Environments Part I: Spinning up to speed on SSD
SSD options for Virtual (and Physical) Environments Part II: The call to duty, SSD endurance
SSD options for Virtual (and Physical) Environments Part III: What type of SSD is best for you?
SSD options for Virtual (and Physical) Environments Part IV: What type of SSD is best for your needs

Ok, nuff said for now.

Cheers Gs

Greg Schulz – Author Cloud and Virtual Data Storage Networking (CRC Press, 2011), The Green and Virtual Data Center (CRC Press, 2009), and Resilient Storage Networks (Elsevier, 2004)

twitter @storageio

All Comments, (C) and (TM) belong to their owners/posters, Other content (C) Copyright 2006-2012 StorageIO and UnlimitedIO All Rights Reserved

More Storage IO momentus HHDD and SSD moments part I

This is the first of a two part series on my latest experiences with HHDD and SSD’s

About two years ago I wanted to start installing solid state devices (SSD’s) into my workstations and laptops. Like many others, I found the expensive price for the limited capacity gains of the then generation SSD’s did not make for a good business decision based on my needs. Don’t get me wrong, I have been a huge fan of SSD for decades as an IT user, vendor, analysts, consultant and consumer and still am. In fact I have some SSD’s used for different purposes as well as many Hard Disk Drives (HDD) and Hybrid Hard Disk Drives (HHDD’s). Almost two years ago when I first tested the HHDD’s, I did an first post in this ongoing series and this two-part post is part of that string of experiences observed evolving from HDD’s to HHDD’s to SSD’s


Image courtesy of Seagate.com

As a refresher, HHDD’s like the Seagate Momentus XT combine a traditional 7,200 RPM 2.5 inch 500GB or 750GB HDD with an integrated single level cell (SLC) nand flash SSD within the actual device. The SSD in the HHDD’s is part of the HDD’s controller complementing the existing DRAM buffer by adding 4GB (500GB models) or 8GB (750GB models) of fast nand flash SSD cache. This means that no external special controller, adapter, data movement or migration software are required to get the performance boost over a traditional HDD and the capacity above a SSD at an affordable cost. In other words, the HHDD’s bridge the gap between those who need large capacity and some performance increases, without having to spend a lot on a lower capacity SSD.

However based on my needs or business requirements two years ago I found the justification to get all the extra performance of  SSD not quite there when. Back two years ago my thinking was that it would be about two maybe three years before the right point for a mix of performance, availability (or reliability e.g. duty cycles), capacity and economics aligned.

Note that this was based on my specific needs and requirements as opposed to my wants or wishes (I wanted SSD back then, however my budget needed to go elsewhere). My requirements and performance needs are probably not the same as yours or others might be. I also wanted to see the incremental technology, product and integration improvements ranging from duty cycle or program/erase cycles (P/E) with newer firmware and flash translation layers (FTLs) among other things. Particularly with multilevel cell (MLC) or enhanced multilevel cell (eMLC) which helps bring the cost down while boosting the capacity, I’m seeing enough to have more confidence in those devices. Note that for the past couple of years I have used single level cell (SLC) nand flash SSD technology in my HHDD’s, the same SSD flash technology that has been found in enterprise class storage.

While I wanted SSD’s two years ago in my laptops and workstations to improve productivity which involves a lot of content creation in addition to consumption, however as mentioned above, there were barriers. So instead of sitting on the sidelines, waiting for SSD’s to either become lower cost, or more capacity for a given cost, or wishing somebody would send me some free stuff (that may or may not have worked), I took a different route. That route was to try the HHDD’s such as Seagate Momentus XT.

Disclosure: Seagate sent me my first HHDD for first testing and verifications before buying several more from Amazon.com and installing them in all laptops, workstations and a server (not all servers have the HHDD’s, or at least yet).

The main reason I went with the HHDD’s two years ago and continue to use them today is to bridge the gap and gain some benefit vs. waiting and wishing and talking about what SSD’s would enable me to do in the future while missing out on productivity enhancements.

The HHDD’s also appealed to me in that my laptops are space constrained for putting two drives and playing the hybrid configuration game of installing both a small SSD and HDD and migrating data back and forth. Sure I could do that for in the office or carry an extra external device around however been there, done that in the past and want to move away from those types of models where possible.

Related links on SDD, HHDD and HDD
More Storage IO momentus HHDD and SSD moments part I
More Storage IO momentus HHDD and SSD moments part II
IO IO it is off to Storage and IO metrics we go
New Seagate Momentus XT Hybrid drive (SSD and HDD)
Other Momentus moments posts here here, here, here and here
SSD and Storage System Performance
Speaking of speeding up business with SSD storage
Are Hard Disk Drives (HDD’s) getting too big?
Has SSD put Hard Disk Drives (HDD’s) On Endangered Species List?
Why SSD based arrays and storage appliances can be a good idea (Part I)
Why SSD based arrays and storage appliances can be a good idea (Part II)
IT and storage economics 101, supply and demand
Researchers and marketers dont agree on future of nand flash SSD
EMC VFCache respinning SSD and intelligent caching (Part I)
EMC VFCache respinning SSD and intelligent caching (Part II)
SSD options for Virtual (and Physical) Environments Part I: Spinning up to speed on SSD
SSD options for Virtual (and Physical) Environments Part II: The call to duty, SSD endurance
SSD options for Virtual (and Physical) Environments Part III: What type of SSD is best for you?
SSD options for Virtual (and Physical) Environments Part IV: What type of SSD is best for your needs

Ok, nuff said for now, lets resume this discussion in part II.

Cheers Gs

Greg Schulz – Author Cloud and Virtual Data Storage Networking (CRC Press, 2011), The Green and Virtual Data Center (CRC Press, 2009), and Resilient Storage Networks (Elsevier, 2004)

twitter @storageio

All Comments, (C) and (TM) belong to their owners/posters, Other content (C) Copyright 2006-2012 StorageIO and UnlimitedIO All Rights Reserved