Single SSD PCIe vs HDD RAID Reliability
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@Francesco-Provino said:
Unfortunately, this is not my case: OEM SSD aren't supported with our RAID cards in the servers, and VMware can't do software RAID (apart from, well, sort of, uhm, VSAN).
IBM's SAS SSD are still incredibly expensive.Ah... the devil is in the details. You are using VMware and lack enterprise software RAID options so can't do super high performance SSD without having a RAID card to support it. Yet another VMware caveat. They screw you at every turn. So many limitations that you would never guess would be there.
Are you sure that "unsupported" is the case, though? Of course it is not supported by IBM, neither is the Intel PCIe board. So both cases are equally without support. The question is "do they work?"
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@scottalanmiller said:
@Francesco-Provino said:
Unfortunately, this is not my case: OEM SSD aren't supported with our RAID cards in the servers, and VMware can't do software RAID (apart from, well, sort of, uhm, VSAN).
IBM's SAS SSD are still incredibly expensive.Ah... the devil is in the details. You are using VMware and lack enterprise software RAID options so can't do super high performance SSD without having a RAID card to support it. Yet another VMware caveat. They screw you at every turn. So many limitations that you would never guess would be there.
Are you sure that "unsupported" is the case, though? Of course it is not supported by IBM, neither is the Intel PCIe board. So both cases are equally without support. The question is "do they work?"
This consideration is interesting, but I don't even know if it's possible to put OEM disks in those hot-swap slots…
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@Francesco-Provino said:
This consideration is interesting, but I don't even know if it's possible to put OEM disks in those hot-swap slots…
Should be, people do it all of the time. It's very standard. There are problems sometimes and the RAID monitoring tools mostly don't work. But blocking non-OEM drives is illegal in many countries (like the US and I presume the EU) so they normally work.
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Putting a non-OEM disk into a hot swap bay is no different then putting on into a PCIe bay.
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@scottalanmiller said:
Putting a non-OEM disk into a hot swap bay is no different then putting on into a PCIe bay.
Errr, no, It will lack the caddy, and I don't think they sell it as spare parts.
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Oh, I see. I don't use IBM servers (especially now that they don't make them anymore, but even before that as even IBM doesn't use their own servers) and forgot that they might be pulling the caddie trick on you. HP does this as well, Dell and SuperMicro do not.
You are right, you might be stuck. In the future, I would use this as a solid reason to avoid both IBM and VMware (IBM is gone now, so it matters little) as both are causing you to:
- Have to spend extra to get less.
- Avoid standard best practices.
- Work around basic system limitations.
- Go to unsupported designs.
I can see why you are interested in the PCIe SSD approach. It isn't because it is cheap or fast or reliable - it is a workaround to the IBM and VMware decisions
I think, when we look at it from that perspective, it starts to make a lot more sense. From purely a technology standpoint, I don't think that it makes sense. -
I think with all of that info that the PCIe SSD approach makes sense. It will be seriously fast and pretty easy to use. And with the sync and backup options you are pretty decently protected. If you can handle the associated downtime to flip over to the SAN while waiting for the SSD to be replaced you will be fine.
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Assuming the IBM RAID controller will allow the use of non OEM drives, I'd buy a bunch of tiny drives on ebay, rip out the old drive, mount the SSDs and you should be good.
If you have to to no RAID card (@scottalanmiller - wouldn't this mean he'd have to install a SAS/SATA controller? I'm guessing the system doesn't have onboard support) yet another reason to move to to Hyper-V now.
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He does have on board hardware RAID. The problem is not his card but his hot swap bays.
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@scottalanmiller said:
He does have on board hardware RAID. The problem is not his card but his hot swap bays.
You mean because of the lack of empty caddies? Sure I understand that, but I addressed that in my post.
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@Dashrender said:
@scottalanmiller said:
He does have on board hardware RAID. The problem is not his card but his hot swap bays.
You mean because of the lack of empty caddies? Sure I understand that, but I addressed that in my post.
oh, meaning rip the caddies off. I didn't understand what you were implying. That makes more sense.
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@scottalanmiller said:
@Dashrender said:
@scottalanmiller said:
He does have on board hardware RAID. The problem is not his card but his hot swap bays.
You mean because of the lack of empty caddies? Sure I understand that, but I addressed that in my post.
oh, meaning rip the caddies off. I didn't understand what you were implying. That makes more sense.
Exactly. I've considered doing the same for my HP server.
