Which of these SSD's is best for pfSense?
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@Phishfry:
I worry about a physical disk spinning 24/7. Not many 2.5" hard drives are made for that duty cycle. You mentioned squid..
Very true, I think I'll go for an SSD then, since it's going to solve more of my issues too such as quieter operation and generally an SSD is going to be faster than a HDD.
2.5'', 3Gb/s SATA, 24/7
Thank you for the recommendation, little difficult to read the page as you don't seem to be pointing at a specific drive and most of its in German ???
So anybody got any experience with a particular SSD?
And thoughts on the 2 SSD's that haven't yet been gunned down or written off?:
1. Intel 530 120GB SSD SATA III
2. Crucial MX200 250GB SSD SATA IIIFrom what I can see the MX200 is faster, and it has the bonus of being able to join my current system and be put into a raid with my other MX200 250GB drive should I ever retire it from the router. From what I can see it has incredible endurance too. But having heard people having issues with the SAMSUNG 850 Evo, has anybody had any experience with Crucial SSD's with pfSense? If there's compatibility issues then I'm left with the Intel 530. Anybody had any luck with the Intel 530?
Cheers,
Joe -
Nope it's a list of HDDs ready for 24/7, so feel free to find a supplier for any of those listed.
Intel is always a good option… ;-)
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Nope it's a list of HDDs ready for 24/7, so feel free to find a supplier for any of those listed.
Intel is always a good option… ;-)
Ohh I see, some of those didn't look like they were rated for 24/7 use. I see one of them is a WD Black haha. Thank you for researching it and providing me with some options though, I greatly appreciate it!
I think I will go with an SSD though, as a HDD will still give me the issue of noise and perhaps minor vibrations which I'd prefer to eliminate.
Intel is indeed a solid reliable choice everytime, it is the cheaper than the MX200 as well, it being smaller helps the price haha.
Can anybody shed some light on past experiences with either the Intel 530 or the Crucial MX200? Or a different drive you've had amazing experiences with?
Thanks,
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If you have lots of disposable income let me suggest an Intel 730 Model SSDSC2BP240G4R5. Overkill, definitely…why get it? Because you can...
Another interesting choice might be the Seagate 500GB SSHD (Hybrid) Model ST500LM000.
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If you have lots of disposable income let me suggest an Intel 730 Model SSDSC2BP240G4R5. Overkill, definitely…why get it? Because you can...
Another interesting choice might be the Seagate 500GB SSHD (Hybrid) Model ST500LM000.
I most certainly do not have THAT much disposable income!
True I did consider the Seagate SSHD's but i'd still then have a mechanic drive which I'd prefer to avoid, main criteria for this storage upgrade is:
1. Speed
2. Reduced Noise/Vibrations
3. Endurance and ReliabilitySo an SSD is going to tick all those points.
But thank you for the suggestions! I wish I could an afford an intel 730 ::)
Cheers,
Joe -
4. Samsung 2.5 Inch SATA3 850 EVO 120GB SSD/Solid State Drive
Samsung840 EVO or Pro
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I'm using an Intel 535 120gb with TRIM enabled. No problems at all for now. It was around 70€ on Amazon
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The SanDisk Extreme Pro line has a 10 year warranty. That is what I call standing behind your product.
https://www.sandisk.com/home/ssd/extreme-pro-ssd -
Just as a counterbalance. Every commercial firewall I have bought off ebay has had a physical spinning disk in it. The Shelf sized Astaro-Sophos and Lanners units use a regular Laptop Hard disk like the guy listed above. All the others I bought had 3.5" disks..
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Just as a counterbalance. Every commercial firewall I have bought off ebay has had a physical spinning disk in it.
For sure this might be, but if Squid will be used as a caching proxy server, a SDD will be speeding up much
the entire caching process as I know, and there fore it could be a real win for pfSense together with Squid
as a caching proxy. If not, it does no matter in my eyes, or perhaps if a HAVP AV scanning proxy is in usage. -
@Phishfry:
Just as a counterbalance. Every commercial firewall I have bought off ebay has had a physical spinning disk in it. The Shelf sized Astaro-Sophos and Lanners units use a regular Laptop Hard disk like the guy listed above. All the others I bought had 3.5" disks..
My ASAs all have SSDs.
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I am using this one –> Mushkin Enhanced Chronos 2.5" 60GB MKNSSDCR60GB-7
for several months now with no issues. SWAP is enable but never used as i planed ahead with plenty of RAM. I am very happy with it!Cheers!
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@BlueKobold:
4. Samsung 2.5 Inch SATA3 850 EVO 120GB SSD/Solid State Drive
Samsung840 EVO or Pro
Hmm, are you using a samsung 840 EVO or Pro? They're a bit of a pain to find since they're the older generation now.
I'm using an Intel 535 120gb with TRIM enabled. No problems at all for now. It was around 70€ on Amazon
I might go with that then, its the cheaper of the SSD's I mentioned and being Intel I would expect a solid reliable experience with fairly quick speeds too. Price isn't too bad for sure.
@Phishfry:
The SanDisk Extreme Pro line has a 10 year warranty. That is what I call standing behind your product.
https://www.sandisk.com/home/ssd/extreme-pro-ssdDamn, 10 year warranty that is definitely some amount of confidence behind their product, unfortunately the price is a little steeper especially as the smallest capacity is 240GB. Good recommendation though, but based on the price I might give it a pass for the Intel 535 at this point in time. If I were going for 240GB I'd likely go for the cheaper but almost equally as fast and as reliable MX200 from crucial, unless anybody thinks its particularly bad or has compatibility issues?
@BlueKobold:
Just as a counterbalance. Every commercial firewall I have bought off ebay has had a physical spinning disk in it.
For sure this might be, but if Squid will be used as a caching proxy server, a SDD will be speeding up much
the entire caching process as I know, and there fore it could be a real win for pfSense together with Squid
as a caching proxy. If not, it does no matter in my eyes, or perhaps if a HAVP AV scanning proxy is in usage.I agree, since I have setup ClamAV inside Squid Proxy and I've also got Squid Caching which also uses some disk space too as I dont have a ton of RAM so a good SSD is more preferable to a HDD. Plus a HDD won't solve my criteria of wanting minimal/zero noise and vibration. So SSD is definitely the way forward here. But which SSD is the key question haha.
I am using this one –> Mushkin Enhanced Chronos 2.5" 60GB MKNSSDCR60GB-7
for several months now with no issues. SWAP is enable but never used as i planed ahead with plenty of RAM. I am very happy with it!Cheers!
Cheers for the recommendation! Personally I dislike Mushkin, had bad experiences with other Mushkin products so I don't really trust their durability and reliability.
So it seems it's still down to either:
1. Intel 535 120GB SSD which is looking like the favourite due to it being Intel and another user recommending it having used it in their pfSense box. MTB of 1.2 million hours2. Crucial MX200 which is a good durable SSD for a reasonable price though nobody seems to have had any experience with it in pfSense, fast speeds and good all round SSD. MTBF of 1.5 million hours
3. Or an alternative such as Frank's suggestion of an 840 Evo/Pro?
Cheers,
Joep.s I really appreciate the ton of suggestions and support guys, I am loving to be a part of the pfSense community, thank you!
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Hmm, are you using a samsung 840 EVO or Pro? They're a bit of a pain to find since they're the older generation now.
Old but not bad! Have had no BIOS issue likes the Samsung850 series and no TRIM support problem
as reported by others here in this forum. So cheap to get and very stable. -
The Intel 535 is being used in official hardware on the pfSense store, so they should be good and reliable for sure!
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@BlueKobold:
Hmm, are you using a samsung 840 EVO or Pro? They're a bit of a pain to find since they're the older generation now.
Old but not bad! Have had no BIOS issue likes the Samsung850 series and no TRIM support problem
as reported by others here in this forum. So cheap to get and very stable.Oh, in that case I may well try and take a look for one and see if I can grab a good deal, I'm just conscious of the fact it's last generation's model and so finding a brand new one with a warranty etc. might be tricky!
The Intel 535 is being used in official hardware on the pfSense store, so they should be good and reliable for sure!
Oh, wow how stupid of me not to look in the official hardware store of pfSense :-[ I didn't think to check to see what storage was listed in their own products which they've spent many hours and lots of money testing reliability and compatibility with those components!
Well the Intel is looking like the favourite currently! Since 730 is out of budget, the MX200 is too large thus more expensive and its compatibility with pfSense is unknown and the 840 evo/pro whilst apparently a solid option, especially if Frank is recommending it, it's going to be hard to find one now still with a warranty and for a decent price. The Intel 535 is looking like a winner. My whole pfSense box is going to be purely Intel components at this rate!
Thank you though bluepr0 for spotting that, I'm slightly embarrassed I even asked if it was compatible now :-[
And thank you Frank as always for your very valued input, I may look around and see what prices the 840's are going for and then make the ultimate decision between the Intel 535 and the Samsung 840.
And thank you to everybody else who took time out of their day to drop me some advice! In love with pfSense and the community at the moment.
Cheers guys!
Joe -
@Joe, I don't want you to change your mind, but I've got a 850 EVO which is running just fine.
pass0: <samsung 850="" ssd="" evo="" 120gb="" emt02b6q="">ACS-2 ATA SATA 3.x device pass0: 600.000MB/s transfers (SATA 3.x, UDMA6, PIO 512bytes) protocol ATA/ATAPI-9 SATA 3.x device model Samsung SSD 850 EVO 120GB firmware revision EMT02B6Q serial number abcd WWN 1234 cylinders 16383 heads 16 sectors/track 63 sector size logical 512, physical 512, offset 0 LBA supported 234441648 sectors LBA48 supported 234441648 sectors PIO supported PIO4 DMA supported WDMA2 UDMA6 media RPM non-rotating Feature Support Enabled Value Vendor read ahead yes yes write cache yes yes flush cache yes yes overlap no Tagged Command Queuing (TCQ) no no Native Command Queuing (NCQ) yes 32 tags NCQ Queue Management no NCQ Streaming no Receive & Send FPDMA Queued yes SMART yes yes microcode download yes yes security yes yes power management yes yes advanced power management no no automatic acoustic management no no media status notification no no power-up in Standby no no write-read-verify yes no 0/0x0 unload no no general purpose logging yes yes free-fall no no Data Set Management (DSM/TRIM) yes DSM - max 512byte blocks yes 8 DSM - deterministic read no Host Protected Area (HPA) yes no 234441648/234441648 HPA - Security no</samsung> -
@Joe, I don't want you to change your mind, but I've got a 850 EVO which is running just fine.
Some of the early sold Samsung850 SSDs were coming with a firmware failure and this was fixed by a new
firmware or an upgrade, only infected from or by this might be only the Linux based TRIM support and
other things. So it could really be that joe must only update the firmware to get rid of the problem. -
For a small system with up to 5 users i would assume just about any SSD would be ok. Just do frequent config backups!
If you use squid-cache with more users always go for MLC.
cheap: Sansung EVO or any TLC-Drive (I'd go for something with at least 2Y warranty+)
consumer grade: Intel 510, Intel 520, Intel 535 or Samsung 8X0 Pro are a good bet.
professional grade: Samsung SSD PM8X1, Intel DC 3500 or even 3700Keep in mind that IOPs and r/w Numbers for Consumer SSDs are always peak numbers and for enterprise drives mostly in steady state!
If you want to keep your SSD alive as long as possible just don't use it all. Keep 10-20% free space (at install).
That ensures that even consumer-grade ssds have enough breathing room. You can even leave TRIM off then.tl;dr: EVO (TLC) will be fine for home usage. If it's your companies Firewall go Intel 535 or DC-Grade MLC/eMLC Drives.
