I'm curious as to how it physically interfaces. If it requires a simple cable that has a PCIe connector on the other end, requires a special place on a motherboard, or has a daughter card.
Honestly, I can see the possibility of a "rear PCIe bay" type of arrangement that would let you eject the storage from a PCIe based card out the back of the PC via a bay on itself. Along the same lines that PCI-PCMCIA adapters worked.
Enterprise SSDs are known to cost thousands of dollars. There are many enterprise SSDs which are more expensive and slower than this one, so I wouldn't call this a tough sell. Enterprise world is just so different from the average PC world
Of course there are other expensive enterprise SSDs... but that doesn't make this one compatible or reliable. And yes the enterprise world is different than the consumer market, but not all enteprise folks are foolish. The price certainly doesn't insure reliability.
unless these drives allow dual controller+mirroring, who in their right mind would buy one? you can lose 10k/100k of productivity its just wtf are they thinking.
It actually wouldnt. It targets companies that need speed. Traditionally they would get this speed with an expensive (300+$ to thousands of dollars) RAID controller and short stroke 15k drives with few platters (super expensive for HDD).
Those SSDs replace the entire shebang, raid controller and a ton of drives that take up space and generate heat and require more maintenance (by sheer dint of how many components it has)
Isn't there going to be a problem with drivers? PCIe devices need drivers. If this interface takes off you'll need a driver for each make/model of drive. With a SAS/SATA interface you just need a driver for the SATA/SATA controller, not the actual drives. There is a use case for super fast hot-swappable SSDs, but I don't see this taking off for normal front accessible drives.
if disk IO is slowing down your database, and you have growing needs, i could see select customers dropping $15K on three of these for a raid 5. I mean the alternative is building a ram hog like facebook does with their 512gb of ram AMD servers.
It seems like the biggest obstacle to these drives is raid. Where software raid is probably a no brainner with these, some builders prefer raid cards and i don't see x16 cards supporting two of these being a very good solution.
It would be interesting to see drives like this one and also the Micron P300 SLC and other such enterprise SSD's comared here at Anandtech. Currently we are very limited with numbers for SLC drives, mainly we see only the old venerable Intel X25-E in your reviews...
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Demon-Xanth - Wednesday, March 7, 2012 - link
I'm curious as to how it physically interfaces. If it requires a simple cable that has a PCIe connector on the other end, requires a special place on a motherboard, or has a daughter card.Honestly, I can see the possibility of a "rear PCIe bay" type of arrangement that would let you eject the storage from a PCIe based card out the back of the PC via a bay on itself. Along the same lines that PCI-PCMCIA adapters worked.
Beenthere - Wednesday, March 7, 2012 - link
If this SSD is actually reliable and compatible, it's still gonna be a tough sell at those prices.Kristian Vättö - Wednesday, March 7, 2012 - link
Enterprise SSDs are known to cost thousands of dollars. There are many enterprise SSDs which are more expensive and slower than this one, so I wouldn't call this a tough sell. Enterprise world is just so different from the average PC worldBeenthere - Wednesday, March 7, 2012 - link
Of course there are other expensive enterprise SSDs... but that doesn't make this one compatible or reliable. And yes the enterprise world is different than the consumer market, but not all enteprise folks are foolish. The price certainly doesn't insure reliability.Luke212 - Thursday, March 8, 2012 - link
unless these drives allow dual controller+mirroring, who in their right mind would buy one? you can lose 10k/100k of productivity its just wtf are they thinking.taltamir - Monday, March 26, 2012 - link
It actually wouldnt.It targets companies that need speed. Traditionally they would get this speed with an expensive (300+$ to thousands of dollars) RAID controller and short stroke 15k drives with few platters (super expensive for HDD).
Those SSDs replace the entire shebang, raid controller and a ton of drives that take up space and generate heat and require more maintenance (by sheer dint of how many components it has)
antoncohen - Thursday, March 8, 2012 - link
Isn't there going to be a problem with drivers? PCIe devices need drivers. If this interface takes off you'll need a driver for each make/model of drive. With a SAS/SATA interface you just need a driver for the SATA/SATA controller, not the actual drives. There is a use case for super fast hot-swappable SSDs, but I don't see this taking off for normal front accessible drives.rrohbeck - Saturday, March 10, 2012 - link
No, one driver can handle a list of PCI IDs.0ldman79 - Friday, March 9, 2012 - link
Several of the big boys are working on this as an industry standard for new hard drives.I'm curious as to how they're going to do it, but I guess we'll see soon enough.
krazyderek - Tuesday, March 13, 2012 - link
if disk IO is slowing down your database, and you have growing needs, i could see select customers dropping $15K on three of these for a raid 5. I mean the alternative is building a ram hog like facebook does with their 512gb of ram AMD servers.It seems like the biggest obstacle to these drives is raid. Where software raid is probably a no brainner with these, some builders prefer raid cards and i don't see x16 cards supporting two of these being a very good solution.
Per Hansson - Tuesday, March 20, 2012 - link
It would be interesting to see drives like this one and also the Micron P300 SLC and other such enterprise SSD's comared here at Anandtech.Currently we are very limited with numbers for SLC drives, mainly we see only the old venerable Intel X25-E in your reviews...
Urbanos - Friday, March 23, 2012 - link
the Dell R620/720 and the HP DL360/380 G8p are ready to go for when these drives start shipping! can't wait. it is a new world of performance.