| Test Hardware | |
|---|---|
| Processor | Intel Core i5-2400 (Sandy Bridge), 32 nm, 3.1 GHz, LGA 1155, 6 MB Shared L3, Turbo Boost Enabled |
| Motherboard | Gigabyte GA-Z68X-UD7-B3 |
| Memory | Kingston Hyper-X 8 GB (2 x 4 GB) DDR3-1333 @ DDR3-1333, 1.5 V |
| System Drive | OCZ Vertex 3 240 GB SATA 6Gb/s |
| Tested Drives | Intel SSD 710 200 GB SATA 3Gb/s, Firmware: - |
| Intel SSD 320 300 GB SATA 3Gb/s, Firmware: - | |
| Intel SSD 520 240 GB SATA 6Gb/s, Firmware: - | |
| Toshiba MK4001GRZB 200 GB SAS 6Gb/s, Firmware: - SAS Controller: LSI SAS 9211-8i | |
| Graphics | Palit GeForce GTX 460 1 GB |
| Power Supply | Seasonic 760 W, 80 PLUS Gold |
| System Software and Drivers | |
| Operating System | Windows 7 x64 Ultimate |
| DirectX | DirectX 11 |
| Driver | Graphics: Nvidia 270.61 RST: 10.6.0.1002 Virtu: 1.1.101 |
| Benchmarks | |
|---|---|
| Iometer 1.1.0 | # Workers = 4, 4 KB Random: LBA= Full Span varying QDs, 128 KB & 2 MB Sequential |
| Enterprise Testing: Iometer Workloads | Read | Random | Transfer Size |
|---|---|---|---|
| Database | 67% | 100% | 8 KB - 100% |
| File server | 80% | 100% | 512 Bytes – 10% 1 KB – 5% 2 KB – 5% 4 KB – 60% 8 KB – 2% 16 KB – 4% 32 KB – 4% 64 KB – 10% |
| Web server | 100% | 100% | 512 Bytes – 22% 1 KB – 15% 2 KB – 8% 4 KB – 23% 8 KB – 15% 16 KB – 2% 32 KB - 6% 64 KB – 7% 128 KB – 1% 512 KB – 1% |
We used LSI's SAS 9211-8i HBA for testing Toshiba's drive. Without it, we wouldn't have been able to generate the long-term endurance numbers for SLC NAND. We do have other SAS cards in the lab, but they're hardware-assisted RAID controllers, which usually means SMART monitoring is disabled when drives are accessed individually. In addition, Toshiba and others recommend an LSI-based solution for the purposes of benchmarking, as that's most common to enterprise environments.

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Summary
- Toshiba's SAS-Based Enterprise-Class SSD
- Endurance: Comparing MLC, eMLC, And SLC
- Test Setup And Benchmarks
- Benchmarking For The Enterprise: A Whole New World
- 4 KB Random Performance
- 128 KB And 2 MB Sequential Performance
- Power Consumption
- Enterprise Workload Performance
- MK4001GRZB : Great Endurance, Fast Reads, Slower Writes
Ask a Category Expert
...fullish of cash? Definitely. Foolish? Probably not.
You've clearly not understood the purpose of this article. Stick to commenting the desktop drive reviews in the future, please.
Thank you for this review, and especially your estimations on the endurance of the drive. It's something that's damn near impossible for us IT professionals to get accurate estimations of in the real world. For some reason, bosses tend to want the expensive hardware to be put to use instead of being thoroughly tested.
More of these types of articles please! :]
Perhaps the Enterprise SSD Fairy will bring you a Hitatchi UltraStar with Intel's 6gbps controller. I'd be eager to see how it compares.
There is no substitute for SLC though.
...fullish of cash? Definitely. Foolish? Probably not.
damn the english language.....there are way to many words that sound alike
You've clearly not understood the purpose of this article. Stick to commenting the desktop drive reviews in the future, please.
Thank you for this review, and especially your estimations on the endurance of the drive. It's something that's damn near impossible for us IT professionals to get accurate estimations of in the real world. For some reason, bosses tend to want the expensive hardware to be put to use instead of being thoroughly tested.
More of these types of articles please! :]
Even when the INTEL SSD already has an endurance longer than your refresh cycle for your tech stack?
"Back in my days storage drives used to have moving parts. Now its all solid state."
Unlike super-sized enterprise which I am not, the cost/benefit calculations would be difficult for myself. I know firsthand the money that i.e. financial institutions push into their data centers, and for those folks $7K isn't out of the question.
Interesting SSD and if the prices come down and warranty extended then IMO it would be something to consider and compare against Intel's products.
I was not disappointed.
I refer you to the ~$20,000 1.2TB fusion-io SSD's.
but wow... $7000...
I go with 10 of 128GB SSD....
Hell I'll gladly pay that much because drives like this save money in the long run. They are cheaper and much easier to set up and maintain vs hundred of mechanical drives in a raid setup. In power alone over the live of the drive vs mechanical drives adds up. So $7k isn't that bad and this isn't the most expensive SSD that I have seen.
Throw 50TB daily writes on that Intel SDD array of yours and it will last you only 3 months until full failure.
"Hey uh, our entire rack of $50 SSDs simply died on us, along with all of our business files."
Throw 3 Intel MLC 480 GB SSD's in RAID-5 (1k each), make an agressive overprovisioning...and they will both last MUCH longer and also run circles to this expensive piece of hardware being reviewed.
Heck, it's pretty much touching Fusion-IO pricing without even coming close on speed.
This will only work for people needing plug & play replacement for their SAS drives AND with very deep pockets. Since i suspect the replacement should be made in batches...it will be VERY expensive.
Anyone else with brains can find a lot of cheaper, faster AND more reliable solutions.
I'd wait for a Velodrive, raid a couple of them and just have regular backups on a storage with regular HDD's (that is, read GB/s from a couple SSD's...write GB/s sequentially to a storage).
I do understand though that there are out there companies that can't risk innovation and smart choices and have to recur to handwritten promises and warranties of the big guys.
Reason why buying a Dell costs a hell lot more than building it yourself.
Reason why building your own storage is a fraction of the price of an EMC solution.
And so on...
For $7000 that is the first thing I would have done Andrew.
"Why are they called drives, granpa?"