
Toshiba's MK4001GRZB is able to take full advantage of its SAS 6 Gb/s interface in this test, exceeding the performance of its SATA-based competition running at the same data rate. Presented with a queue depth of 32, performance starts to plateau at roughly 95 000 IOPS. The nearest competition is Micron's SLC-based P300, which starts higher than Toshiba's drive at lower queue depths, but falls just short of 60 000 IOPS with 16 outstanding commands or more.
Intel, the indisputable favorite amongst IT professionals shopping for enterprise-class SSDs, has a very driven focus on reliably. So much so, in fact, that its client-oriented drives are being used in certain server-based environments. So, we thought it'd be fitting to include SSD 320 and SSD 520 into our benchmarks for the sake of comparison. Interestingly, the company's SandForce controller-based drive achieves up to 50 000 IOPS using Intel's binned MLC flash. That falls shy of the P300, but it's a substantial improvement over the SSD 320 and more business-class SSD 710. And when we hit the drive with incompressible data, indicated by the light blue line marked Random, performance remains similar. The SandForce controller's reliance on compression for exceptional performance doesn't become a factor until we analyze write speed.

The MK4001GRZB has a rated random write speed of 16 000 IOPS at a queue depth of 16. According to our Iometer testing, that figure applies to all queue depths once the drive hits its steady state. In comparison, Micron's P300 performs much better, as it hits speeds just over 20 000 IOPS.
As an aside, Intel's SSD 520 really struts its stuff in this test thanks to SandForce's second-gen controller. At a queue depth of 64, the desktop-class SSD plateaus at speeds just over 50 000 IOPS.

Once we hit the steady state for 4 KB random I/O, the P300's average response time appears just slightly lower than Toshiba's MK4001GRZB, though the delta is only 25%.
Yet, in the same environment, peak response time measurements actually favor the SLC-based SSD. Going by the numbers, the max response time for the MK4001GRZB is 53.7 ms, which is almost 8x lower than the P300.
Although we don't mean to keep taking the emphasis off enterprise-class storage, we're again surprised by Intel's relatively new SSD 520. Depending on data type, the drive's maximum response time falls between ~125-155 ms. This puts the SSD 520 on par with Intel's SSD 710, and slightly better than its client-oriented SSD 320.

- 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
...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?"