SSD (Solid State Drive) and pfSense (Important)

stan-qaz

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/

isamudysan

@kejianshi:

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?

kejianshi

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.

stan-qaz

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

kejianshi

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.

stan-qaz

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

Harvy66

@kejianshi:

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.

kejianshi

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.

Harvy66

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.

isamudysan

i totally appreciate all your suggestions and insights in this. as a newbie in the pfsense world and building my own router in the near future, all of this worth more than money can buy. thanks and gratitude. of course, i will continue to monitor this thread and others. with that, i'm gonna be in the hunt for some some SLC SSDs from intel if i'm able to find some. ;D

reilos

@isamudysan:

i'm gonna be in the hunt for some some SLC SSDs from intel if i'm able to find some. ;D

Were you able to find some? I'm looking for some storage for my new build too :)

Were you able to find some? I'm looking for some storage for my new build too

Intel X25-E 32 GB SATA SLC SSD 2.5" Drive (SSDSA2SH032G101) for ~$345

Perhaps a SATA-DOM SSD (SLC) would be an alternative.
SATA DOM SSD, SLC, 7-PIN, Horizontal - 32 GB for ~135 €

pfsense_me

Hi !
I bought one like that for my pfsense box. No yet received.
It is a 32GB msata SLC SSD, about 30 EUR:
http://www.aliexpress.com/item/New-Mini-PCIE-SSD-mSATA-32GB-SLC-Flash-Hard-Solid-State-Disk-For-PC-Laptop/1875478645.html
I asked the manufacturer and he confirmed the drive supports TRIM command.
You should confirm availability with the sellers as my first order got canceled do to unavailability.

b.o.f.h.

Hello,

Ive registered here to clarify some things.
I know its an old Topic but since it streched over 4 years it should be the right place.

First of Write cycles are not that of a concern as you might think its just a different perception, but in fact you really need to try hard artificial to wear out a normal modern ssd with writes faster then a regular hdd wears out mechanical.

now first thing you have to understand is that a SSD automatical shuffles the writes on different cells and trys to distribute write counts evenly across every cell.

this also means the more free space you have the better youre off. indeed you can wear out an ssd if you have very small free space and heavy writing. lets say you leave 2 GB free, rest is static data, and you write several gigs a day then youre indeed be out of luck quickly.

second ssd raid DOES NOT mirror the write pattern, thats nonsense, whoever wrote that has no clue what he is talking about.
in which cell data is stored is only up to the controller within the sdd he will decide the freshest cell and write to it.

now the best thing you can do is use a big ssd 128gig or bigger even you need only a tiny bit.
the money savings are negligent here, but you make shure it never wears out.

it doesnt even matter if you partition it or not, any free space is used for garbage collection

forget terms like fragementation and partitions ini a physical aerea, those aint exist anymore, they are just virtual.
lets say oyu have 2 partitions and 4 cells to write then its entirely possible that
partition 1 is on cell 1 and 3, and parition 2 is on cell 2 and 4.
after a few delete and write cycles this could change to partition 1 on cell 3 and 4, partition 2 on cell 1 and 2

so it really doesnt matter.
just the more free space you have the longer lifetime in terms of write cycles.
ideally if you can log to ram and archive logs as zips from ram to disk would be the ideal case or a filesystem that compresses automatically.

but even without it, on modern drives just use a 128giug or a chea 256gig drive, or take 2 to mirror,.. and youre fine,
swap ofc shoud be used only for emergency so swapiness should be reduced to a minimum, but usually you should not be able to kill your sdd with your firewall logs :)

and even if you do, dont worry, you will still be able to read, you firewall will crush, yes, but you still can mirror data to a new drive and proceed

mattlach

@b.o.f.h.:

Hello,

Ive registered here to clarify some things.
I know its an old Topic but since it streched over 4 years it should be the right place.

First of Write cycles are not that of a concern as you might think its just a different perception, but in fact you really need to try hard artificial to wear out a normal modern ssd with writes faster then a regular hdd wears out mechanical.

now first thing you have to understand is that a SSD automatical shuffles the writes on different cells and trys to distribute write counts evenly across every cell.

this also means the more free space you have the better youre off. indeed you can wear out an ssd if you have very small free space and heavy writing. lets say you leave 2 GB free, rest is static data, and you write several gigs a day then youre indeed be out of luck quickly.

second ssd raid DOES NOT mirror the write pattern, thats nonsense, whoever wrote that has no clue what he is talking about.
in which cell data is stored is only up to the controller within the sdd he will decide the freshest cell and write to it.

now the best thing you can do is use a big ssd 128gig or bigger even you need only a tiny bit.
the money savings are negligent here, but you make shure it never wears out.

it doesnt even matter if you partition it or not, any free space is used for garbage collection

forget terms like fragementation and partitions ini a physical aerea, those aint exist anymore, they are just virtual.
lets say oyu have 2 partitions and 4 cells to write then its entirely possible that
partition 1 is on cell 1 and 3, and parition 2 is on cell 2 and 4.
after a few delete and write cycles this could change to partition 1 on cell 3 and 4, partition 2 on cell 1 and 2

so it really doesnt matter.
just the more free space you have the longer lifetime in terms of write cycles.
ideally if you can log to ram and archive logs as zips from ram to disk would be the ideal case or a filesystem that compresses automatically.

but even without it, on modern drives just use a 128giug or a chea 256gig drive, or take 2 to mirror,.. and youre fine,
swap ofc shoud be used only for emergency so swapiness should be reduced to a minimum, but usually you should not be able to kill your sdd with your firewall logs :)

and even if you do, dont worry, you will still be able to read, you firewall will crush, yes, but you still can mirror data to a new drive and proceed

Yeah, write cycles may have been a concern when this thread was first started with low end SSD's, USB drives,CF cards and DOM's, but this really is not the case anymore.

Firstly, pfSense - even in full, non-nanoBSD install - really doesn't write that much. Unless you have squid cache or another write heavy plugin it's only a matter of text log entries, and unless you've tweaked the log settings to be ridiculously verbose this is minor.

I have been using pfSenae for ~5 years now and in that time I've never had it installed on a non-flash media, and I've never had any premature failure of flash devices.

I really feel like this is a legacy concern from back in the day when SSD's had higher write amplification and lower total write cycle counts than they do today.

lets say you leave 2 GB free, rest is static data,

A part of any SSD or mSATA will be used by the controller as cache and if there will be then to less
amount of free space it will be not really working well anymore. All in all as mSATA or real SSD the
flash storage will be a huge gain for smaller appliances with a looking eye toward heat prevention,
loudness and speed. Nothing to complain anymore about that art of storage in m eyes. And the new
M.2 SSDs will be in for sure also matching well for that art and wise of usage.

Aluminum

Actually this thread was 99% bullshit 5 years ago too, unless you bought absolute gutter-trash drives. I recently re-purposed a pfsense box with an intel G2 in it, the wear level was like 5% after 4 years, and that had already spent some time in a desktop pc before.

Keep in mind that every piece of hardware can suffer random fails.

kejianshi

Nah - years ago SSDs were in general flakey. Sure there were some OK ones but problem is you didn't really have a way of knowing they were OK until they had some time to prove themselves.

mattlach

@kejianshi:

Nah - years ago SSDs were in general flakey. Sure there were some OK ones but problem is you didn't really have a way of knowing they were OK until they had some time to prove themselves.

Yeah, in the early days Intel ones were always pretty good but expensive, Toshiba ones were pretty reliable but slow, once Samsung came around they started making good reliable ones.

I started using SSD's in late 2009, and all of mine from that era died one way or another. Possibly because I went with OCZ :p

kejianshi

I have a few old ssd running in some pfsense. But I didnt buy them at that time because it was a roll of the dice.

I waited and bought several of the ones proven not to die…. Samsung drives.