[olug] SSD write durability in production use

[Bill Brush]

On Mon, Oct 13, 2008 at 10:15 PM, Obi-Wan <obiwan at jedi.com> wrote:
>>  But are you willing to pay up to $800 for the best
>> SSD near 80GB and $400 near 40 GB.
>
> Seriously?  Ouch!  $10/GB is a log.  Even the 15Krpm fibre channel drives
> with 100% duty cycles that we bought for our SAN at the hospital only
> cost $2200 for a 1TB drive... just $2.20/GB.
>

SSD is very "shiny" from a tech standpoint, but it's a bit like carbon
fiber in that it's only truly needed in a few special applications,
and those few are very far from the norm.

As per my SAN vendor SSD is really only called for in the event of
doing extraordinarily large numbers of I/O's in very small blocks.
Database performance was one potential application, but he said he's
only sold a few racks of SSD in the years they've had it available,
and the SE that specc'ed it for those customers said that in his
opinion it wasn't an absolute requirement.  They were banks though, so
they had the cash.

I would imagine eBay and Amazon would have a genuine need for that
kind of performance, and maybe someone like Lockheed/Martin.  Maybe
someday I'll be able to justify it, but I doubt it.  :-)

Bill