Viability of Samsung EVO 850 SSD on Dell PERC H710P
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For compatibility and reliability, I would always recommend Enterprise HDD's and SSD's in your server. The Dell branded SSD's have significant price premium so it's certainly understandable to look for lower cost options.
xByte has worked with Edge Memory to have their Enterprise level drives perform correctly in Dell servers. At this point in time that is the only non-Dell branded drive drive we know to work well. They show green lights and do not generate errors in the LifeCycle controller or tools such as OpenManage (All non-Dell branded drives will be reported in tools like Dell's OpenManage as "non-genuine" and show a warning). The Edge drives will cost more than the Samsung EVO 850's, but xByte and Edge will stand behind their compatibility in your R720xd*.
We are in the process of testing some non-Dell branded Intel data center SSD's, but it will be at least a week before I have results for that testing. I have no plans to test a consumer grade SSD like the Samsung EVO 850.
*On the R720xd we have seen a backplane voltage issue when using more than 6 SSD's. The issue has appeared with Dell and non-Dell SSD's. It's an intermittent issue but can create a situation where the server will not power on. We often recommend the 16 bay R720 or 10 bay R620 for an all SSD solution. The newer R730xd does not seem to share this bug.
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Thank you for the reply @todd-at-xByte
I have another question for you as I didn't see any listed. does Edge Memory offer a 1TB SSD?
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Never mind.
I've found the unit that has it...
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This is one of the topics that brought me to this forum, indirectly.
In my research (and real-world experience testing Kingston SSDs in a DELL T320) it is very hit or miss, with the hit ratio being far higher.
It seems to "work", but as @todd-at-xByte mentioned you are running totally blind. My fear was also some sort of "issue" down the road.
DIRECTLY ( ) because of this forum I've been looking into the SSD options from xByte. That is going to be my next test. It's is a little more pricey than the consumer SSDs, but not as bad as the other enterprise-level SSDs I have seen, and certainly much much cheaper than DELL direct.
There is still the question of using non-DELL equipment in a DELL, but others will chime up on that.
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@BRRABill Yeah thanks @todd-at-xbyte for the Edge Memory recommendation.
It only adds $325.32 / per server to my proposed solution.
And alleviates that concern about consumer grade gear. This is the unit I'm looking at.
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That's awesome. Supported third party SSDs will make a big difference.
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@DustinB3403 I was looking at the enterprise-grade ones that xByte sells directly. Do all Edge SSDs work in the DELLs, or just the ones from xByte?
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It was the first drive that I came across on Edge Memories site in the capacity I was looking for.
I didn't know that xByte sells them direct.
Here's an Edge Boost Pro Slim that I assume would work.
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@DustinB3403 these are the ones they see:
http://www.xbyte.com/Edge-Enterprise-SSD.aspxHopefully @todd-at-xByte has more info.
These are the drives I was looking at, the enterprise-class. Compatible with DELl (according to them but I do not doubt it) and enterprise features like powere loss protection, etc.. And still way cheaper than DELL SSDs.
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@BRRABill said:
@DustinB3403 I was looking at the enterprise-grade ones that xByte sells directly. Do all Edge SSDs work in the DELLs, or just the ones from xByte?
I don't know if Edge has incorporated the firmware changes into their entire line or not. I do know that there are some voltage issues on some models. We only sell the models that do not have the issue.
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@todd-at-xByte why isn't xByte willing to try consumer drives?
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I would venture a guess that they feel (as many do) that you need enterprise quality SSDs in a server application.
There was a lot of back and forth over the Internets about this. A lot of people run consumer stuff, but a lot of people yell at them, too!
With the price point of the Edge SSDs that xByte sells, I decided to go that route. It's about 100% more, but considering the cost of consumer stuff that's not terrible.
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@BRRABill said:
I would venture a guess that they feel (as many do) that you need enterprise quality SSDs in a server application.
There was a lot of back and forth over the Internets about this. A lot of people run consumer stuff, but a lot of people yell at them, too!
With the price point of the Edge SSDs that xByte sells, I decided to go that route. It's about 100% more, but considering the cost of consumer stuff that's not terrible.
And they come with support, that's where a bit of the extra 100% goes.
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@scottalanmiller said:
@BRRABill said:
I would venture a guess that they feel (as many do) that you need enterprise quality SSDs in a server application.
There was a lot of back and forth over the Internets about this. A lot of people run consumer stuff, but a lot of people yell at them, too!
With the price point of the Edge SSDs that xByte sells, I decided to go that route. It's about 100% more, but considering the cost of consumer stuff that's not terrible.
And they come with support, that's where a bit of the extra 100% goes.
Yeah, 100% is a lot better than the typical 250-1000% more. And yes I know I'm not comparing apples to apples with the consumer drives versus enterprise drives.. but it's still a cost factor and failure point expectation that are important to note.
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@Dashrender yeah, not bad at all.
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Exactly why I decided to go with them. Or at least get a demo unit from them, I should say.
And yellow exclamation point in OMSA be damned!
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@DustinB3403 said:
It was the first drive that I came across on Edge Memories site in the capacity I was looking for.
I didn't know that xByte sells them direct.
Here's an Edge Boost Pro Slim that I assume would work.
We can sell you any Edge drives, but only the ones listed on our website have the custom firmware that we helped to develop with Edge. If Dell makes a firmware update in the future and causes issues with Edge drives, these will also be the only ones we help to correct. Initial testing and maintenance takes a lot of effort from both companies, so we had to limit our selection. As we work more with each other and as we get feedback from customers about other drives they need, that list may expand.
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@Dashrender said:
@todd-at-xByte why isn't xByte willing to try consumer drives?
In the interest of reliability and compatibility, we opted to only support enterprise level SSDs. We actually only recently supported non-Dell drives because of those same reasons. We started talking with Edge and found a partner who would co-developer firmware to limit the risk to our customers. If Dell makes a firmware change, we didn't want our customers to experience any issues with their drives.
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@ryan-from-xbyte said:
In the interest of reliability and compatibility, we opted to only support enterprise level SSDs. We actually only recently supported non-Dell drives because of those same reasons. We started talking with Edge and found a partner who would co-developer firmware to limit the risk to our customers. If Dell makes a firmware change, we didn't want our customers to experience any issues with their drives.
That what made me reaaaaaaaaaaaaaaally nervous about non-DELL drives.
Not that anything would happen, but the last thing you need is some change form DELL and then your drives stop working, or booting.
Total BS that they do that, but whatever. It's their company and there are other options.