SSD (Solid State Drive) and pfSense (Important)
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If you are using 2.1, also see this thread: http://forum.pfsense.org/index.php/topic,63656.0.html
on how to enable TRIM on the filesystem, use the ahci driver (which is required for TRIM), and fix the SMART diagnostic page after changing to ahci. From what I've read, enabling TRIM should help a lot with SSD longevity. -
@Kr^PacMan:
See this thread where you can compare how much data diffrent SSD:s can write. One 64 GB Crucial M4 drive wrote 768 TiB (Thats 0.76 petabyte) before it failed.
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In conclusion, don't trust people that tells you that your SSD will fail of too much writing.
These guys have been writing to an old 40GB SSD (Intel 320 Series) non-stop for 28 days and failed to make the drive fail…
:D ;D
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I want to report that I've been running a normal install on a 32GB Intel X25-E SSD since the end of September. I was lucky enough to receive a used drive that was at 99 of its wear indicator on SMART (100 is new). It is still at 99 and I expect this will outlast the pfSense box it is in (considering the free blocks and wear rate). The drive shows 1831 power on hours and 80574 Host_Writes_32MiB.
TRIM is enabled. Logging is enabled. Not a ton of packages are running, but my worries are eased. This is basically one of the first drives to support TRIM (and not fail regularly) and they are very affordable now.
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My apologies for resurrecting this thread, but it seemed it would be helpful. It ended with some ambiguity and doubt and I wanted to clear things up. I see later posts that are still confused and I had my own doubts based on what was said here but decided to give it a shot and monitor things.After all, its a bit hard to report on a longer-term test without waiting a bit!
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You're using a X25-E. The Earth will stop spinning before that wears out.
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Has anyone tested any mSATA SSDs to see how they handle sudden power loss? There's an Anandtech article that does a better job of explaining the issue I'm concerned about than I could. An excerpt from the "Truth About Micron's Power-Loss Protection" section:
In the MX100 review, I was still under the impression that there was full power-loss protection in the drive, but my impression was wrong. The client-level implementation only guarantees that data-at-rest is protected, meaning that any in-flight data will be lost, including the user data in the DRAM buffer. In other words the M500, M550 and MX100 do not have power-loss protection – what they have is circuitry that protects against corruption of existing data in the case of a power-loss.
So only in-flight data will be lost? I guess I didn't get the memo when they changed the definition of sync. The whole explanation of MLC programming is well worth the read. It pretty much explains the results this guy saw IMO.
I have some of the 16GB PC Engines mSATAs which use a Phison PS3109-S9-J controller. On the Phison site, they reference SmartFlush and GuaranteedFlush trademarks. It sounds like this (PDF warning) which claims they don't ACK a FLUSH CACHE command until data actually exists on (non-volatile) NAND. Based on that, I feel fairly confident using them, but I haven't seen any independent analysis that verifies the claims. Has anyone else? Has anyone used those SSDs? Opinions?
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3 - 5 years on my Samsung SSDs - 96% - 99% left. No trim. On and writing 24/7 365.
I'm guessing I'm not looking for any failures before I get bore with the drive performance.
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3 - 5 years on my Samsung SSDs - 96% - 99% left. No trim. On and writing 24/7 365.
I'm guessing I'm not looking for any failures before I get bore with the drive performance.
SLC or MLC on them samsung ssds?
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SLC…
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@ryan29:
Has anyone tested any mSATA SSDs to see how they handle sudden power loss? There's an Anandtech article that does a better job of explaining the issue I'm concerned about than I could. An excerpt from the "Truth About Micron's Power-Loss Protection" section:
In the MX100 review, I was still under the impression that there was full power-loss protection in the drive, but my impression was wrong. The client-level implementation only guarantees that data-at-rest is protected, meaning that any in-flight data will be lost, including the user data in the DRAM buffer. In other words the M500, M550 and MX100 do not have power-loss protection – what they have is circuitry that protects against corruption of existing data in the case of a power-loss.
So only in-flight data will be lost? I guess I didn't get the memo when they changed the definition of sync. The whole explanation of MLC programming is well worth the read. It pretty much explains the results this guy saw IMO.
I have some of the 16GB PC Engines mSATAs which use a Phison PS3109-S9-J controller. On the Phison site, they reference SmartFlush and GuaranteedFlush trademarks. It sounds like this (PDF warning) which claims they don't ACK a FLUSH CACHE command until data actually exists on (non-volatile) NAND. Based on that, I feel fairly confident using them, but I haven't seen any independent analysis that verifies the claims. Has anyone else? Has anyone used those SSDs? Opinions?
Sync is only successful if it completes, at which point the data is no longer in-flight. Non-synced data is at the whim the of the write cache.
Samsung has taken the approach of dynamically changing between MLC and SLC and quickly writing data as SLC, the re-writting the data as MLC as time permits. This allows sync to return quickly.
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3 - 5 years on my Samsung SSDs - 96% - 99% left. No trim. On and writing 24/7 365.
I'm guessing I'm not looking for any failures before I get bore with the drive performance.
SLC or MLC on them samsung ssds?
The new 850 use vNAND which can be tweaked between performance and longevity but with no sacrifice to storage density. vNAND can have between 3,000 and 40,000 write cycles, depending on how they tune it. The difference in performance is only between 35MB/s and 55MB/s per chip. I would gladly take 35MB/s for a 10x improvement in write cycles.
One tech site has their 850 pro up to 1.5PB written and it still has 60% of the reserve pool left. It has been at 0 wear leveling for months. Samsung claims they have an 850 120GB drive with 8PB written and it still works.
5 year 170TB written warranty or 10 year for the pro, but same written.
Samsung said they have accepted warranty claims with drives over the 150TB limit, assuming they were using non-server loads, but I wouldn't bank on it.
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Has anyone used a SATA DOM's for an installation? I've got one in my freenas box and I'm real happy with it.
Would a 16GB SATA DOM suffice or should something larger be used for wear leveling?
I plan on updating hardware at some point and was thinking of using one for a small footprint silent setup unless they aren't recommended.
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Some of the SATA SSD DOMs (disk on module) sound interesting but unless space is really at a premium I think a regular SSD is going to be better priced. Really dig into the specs if you plan on reading/writing a lot too, I'd avoid any that don't have a full function controller in any case.
http://www.thessdreview.com/our-reviews/mach-xtreme-sata-dom-32gb-ssd-review-small-os-storage-postage-stamp-sized-form-factor/
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SLC…
at the moment, i believe that SLC SSDs are becoming more difficult to find nowadays than its MLC counterpart. i wonder, however, if by using enterprise SSD would suffice over consumer SSD. e.g., the samsung 845DC EVO over the 840 pro. what else or other options is there for us who are about to get ready to build our own pfsense router?
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I would look for an MLC SSD with a year or two of ratings not showing any issues if price is a concern. Lots of people are reporting intel to be very solid performer.
I don't trust ANY super new tech in a pfsense install I have to rely on to just-work but if its got a bit of time on it and good ratings, should be ok.
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I think the new Samsung 850 series comes with 3D memory and a 5 year warranty if you are really worried about write wear.
http://smile.amazon.com/gp/product/B00OAJ412U/ref=smi_www_rco2_go_smi_1968491462
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I assume "3D" refers to TLC…
I'm glad drive manufacturers are getting more bang for the buck. haha.
Actually, they aren't bad from what I've read, but I've yet to test anything other than SLC personally.
I will soon. When one of my drives fail.
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Nope… It is the way they stack multiple layers of cells inside the chip. From the link I posted:
Samsung’s innovative 3D V-NAND flash memory architecture breaks through density, performance, and endurance limitations of today’s conventional planar NAND architecture. Samsung 3D V-NAND stacks 32 cell layers vertically resulting in higher density and better performance utilizing a smaller footprint.
or for more detail:
http://www.anandtech.com/show/7203/samsungs-3d-vertical-nand-set-to-improve-nand-densities
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I assume "3D" refers to TLC…
I'm glad drive manufacturers are getting more bang for the buck. haha.
Actually, they aren't bad from what I've read, but I've yet to test anything other than SLC personally.
I will soon. When one of my drives fail.
vNAND is TLC, except it has about 40k write cycles instead of 1k-3k like normal TLC. SLC has about 100k write cycles, so that puts vNAND between a 3rd and a half of SLC, but with several times the density. Once you include the increased density, vNAND is the same or better than SLC for total number of bytes written.
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I'm careful and slow to adopt new SSD tech because:
The love affair normally starts with customers saying the drives are perfect/fast/amazing. Anyone who doesn't have one is just using old junk… and then...
Then later you hear about either speed starting to crawl or drives crashing.
Then later the once perfect drive two years later after everyone has one is now the drive you must avoid at all cost because of firmware issues wear leveling issues or some other issues.
So, I prefer drives with a couple years of ratings because a couple of years seems to be the time you start hearing the horror stories.
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I totally agree. My current rule is an SSD must be out for about a year before I purchase it. I purchased an 840 EVO right after it came out and I eventually had to flash it because of the performance issue. I waited for the 850 EVO to be about a year old. Some site has a 1 year old 850 EVO with 1.5PB written and the drive is still going strong with 60% of its reserve pool left.
