WHATS THE FASTEST SSD FOR UNDER 1K$..??

[Xx-SIRIS-xX]

Im looking into getting a MainGear Shift, and the only dilemma im having is choosing the best SSD available right now..

Im going to to be running multiple VM's on the SSD as well as having it as my primary boot drive that the Win7 OS is installed on..

I am considering one of these OCZ Z-Drives..
http://www.newegg.com/Product/ProductList.aspx?Submit=ENE&N=2010150636%201421547726&name=PCI%20Express

but im still not completely sure if those drives would best for a Multiple Virtual Machine Read/Write Intensive Environment..

this review still leaves me with mixed feelings..??
http://hothardware.com/Articles/OCZ-ZDrive-m84-PCIExpress-SSD-Review/?page=1

~Pros~
# Fast large file reads and writes
# Low CPU utilization, hardware RAID
# Elegant single slot PCI Express design
# Reasonable cost per GB considering RAID controller and memory

~Cons~
# Barely as fast as single SSD for small file read/write performance, boot drive and application loading
# Still high cost per GB relative to similar sized SSDs on the market
# Requires external power source
# Mechanical restrictions on some motherboards

Do VM's tend to do more Large or Small file reads/writes..??

What other SSD's would you guys recommend that would be a great Mate for Utilizing the Full performance of a VM-Ware WorkStaion PC..??

 

[sub mesa]

Yes, don't buy these things. They use old fashioned RAID controllers to produce high numbers of sequential I/O but their random IOps is limited.

That's what you likely need, a RAID0 of Intel SSDs might be your best bet.

 

[sub mesa]

In the future, PCI-e products may come out with real controllers that pack a large number of flash channels. Those should be able to get over a million IOps as well as sequential speeds in excess of 1GB/s.

 

[Xx-SIRIS-xX]

So what SSD's would be a good choice then for Use with multiple VM's..??

 

[sub mesa]

One with an Intel controller; currently that's only Intel drives.

 

[sminlal]

If you've got a budget of $1000 then you could buy multiple SSDs of relatively small size and dedicate one to each VM.

 

[sub mesa]

Hm, dedicating storage works well with HDD to prevent lots of seeking, but as SSD like to be loaded with lots of I/O requests, i would opt for one big RAID0 instead, if performance is a concern.

However, using a raw disk in your VM solution might be the fastest option, and i'm not sure if that works on (driver) RAID arrays. In that case, the best option would be to use the SSD as raw disks without any RAID. If you use files, the I/O overhead of the VM may cripple IOps performance, as SSD do alot of IOps you may ultimately be CPU bottlenecked. By using raw disk access instead, the overhead should decrease and thus more IOps would be possible.

 

[raybob95]

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820227498

The clear winner, here.