22 replies to this topic

[Kalint]

Trying something new with a clients SBS.

So I want to do 2 X 128 GB SSD as the Server OS Mirrored.
2 X 1TB HDD as the data Mirrored.

Good idea or should I just do pure HDDs?

[TheReasonIFailed]

I'd say as long as it's the OS it should be OK.

[spudtrooper]

The SSD MTBF way surprasses the technological life of the device to be concerned with beating it up. They're just more expensive than needed so i would always recommend large drives for bulk storage.

Are you running SQL server on SBS? if so, it will love SSDs.. otherwise its just a cost measure.

[Kalint]

spudtrooper, on 29 October 2012 - 19:25, said:

The SSD MTBF way surprasses the technological life of the device to be concerned with beating it up. They're just more expensive than needed so i would always recommend large drives for bulk storage.

Are you running SQL server on SBS? if so, it will love SSDs.. otherwise its just a cost measure.

Yes there will be SQL Server to run my custom software and their Accounting DB.

[LogicalApex]

Why would you need to do this? There is no need for the SSD on a SBS IMHO. Anything that is pushing that level of traffic should be broken out to specialized servers and optimized correctly there before you add SSDs for no reason.

[THE_OBSERVER]

i have this running on my home server, 2x 128GB SSD drives in mirror raid. No issues that i can tell.

[Kalint]

th3r3turn, on 29 October 2012 - 19:34, said:

i have this running on my home server, 2x 128GB SSD drives in mirror raid. No issues that i can tell.

How is the SSD life on it?

[+chconline]

Yep, on my home server running Windows Server 2012, I have 2x Kingston V+200 120GB SSDs running in RAID 1. 1GB/s FTW!

[Aergan]

Samsung 830 series has good options for overprovisioning despite being a desktop classed device. I've ran Server 2012 on mine for a week and performance for RDS/published apps was fantastic.

[Dashel]

chconline, on 29 October 2012 - 20:48, said:

Yep, on my home server running Windows Server 2012, I have 2x Kingston V+200 120GB SSDs running in RAID 1. 1GB/s FTW!

How do you figure? That drive's spec is (read) 300/MBs so a RAID1 best case would give you 600MBs, if your interface and controller aren't the bottleneck which I'll wager they are.

I would go at least RAID10 if its production, I really question if RAID1 write performance will meet the IOPs needed by the SBS databases (unless you followed recommendations and moved SQL to a separate box).

120GB really isn't enough for a living SBS install either.

[+chconline]

Dashel, on 29 October 2012 - 21:10, said:

How do you figure? That drive's spec is (read) 300/MBs so a RAID1 best case would give you 600MBs, if your interface and controller aren't the bottleneck which I'll wager they are.

I would go at least RAID10 if its production, I really question if RAID1 write performance will meet the IOPs needed by the SBS databases (unless you followed recommendations and moved SQL to a separate box).

120GB really isn't enough for a living SBS install either.

The drive spec is over 500MB/s. It's SF-2281. RAID 1 is over 2 ports.

[Mando]

I (@work) have some IBM HS21 blades with Raid SSDs for OS and they fly tbvh. holding up well.

[Tyler R.]

yeah. Just don't raid SSD's. That's a no-no.

[+Jdawg683]

Tyler R., on 31 October 2012 - 18:06, said:

yeah. Just don't raid SSD's. That's a no-no.

whys that?

[UseLess]

My $0.02.

How 'small' is small? Generally most work that a server will do isnt thrashing the HDD - a few file transfers, or a couple of database queries...nothing that you'll really notice scorching improvements from. If you're running some 10gigabit ethernet into your sever, and its serving 100 people...then yeah, fast storage is seriously great. (we have 10GbE at work, but the server is seriously slow so requests struggle/time out often)

The reason i very much DONT suggest SSDs for business is because they brick. If i WAS going to use them for business, I would RAID-1 them so when 1 bricks, there isn't any interruption to the server - swap it out and rebuild. Don't say it wont brick...it MIGHT not...but it can, and its not nice to have a business server come down in burning flames. No matter how you look at it, disaster prevention is infinitely better than disaster recovery. Ive reimaged an SBS server before...its slow and painful, and you do lose (a bit) of data between backups.

TLDR: If you MUST use an SSD - Set up disaster mitigation (RAID-1/10/5/6) as well as disaster recovery(image/backup) - one day you'll need it.

Hope it helps =)

Edit: Thanks mindovermaster...yes, i meant RAID-1. Stay away from RAID-0 like it's the proverbial plague =P