128 KB Sequential

At a queue depth of one, Toshiba's SSD offers sequential read speeds just north of 200 MB/s, putting it on par with the SSD 320 and 710. As you scale up, however, the MK4001GRZB's performance peaks and plateaus at 510 MB/s. That's substantially better than Micron's P300, which is only able to reach a top speed of 450 MB/s.
In read-heavy enterprise workloads, Intel's SSD 520 looks like an attractive option. It's able to nearly match the much more expensive MK4001GRZB when there are more than eight outstanding I/O commands.

Although performance plateaus at a queue depth of two for all of our tested SSDs in this 128 KB sequential write test, there are substantial differences between the various models. Toshiba's MK4001GRZB falls just shy of 300 MB/s, while Micron's P300 pushes closer to 350 MB/s.
Interestingly, the SandForce-based SSD 520 hits speeds just over 500 MB/s when it's presented with compressible data. At the other end of the spectrum, when you hammer it with incompressible information, the SSD 520 barely outperforms the SATA 3Gb/s-capable SSD 320 and 710.

Moving to a larger block size makes the effect of queue depth less important. Using 2 MB transfers, Intel's SSD 520 leads the pack with a sequential write speed close to 550 MB/s (so long as you're working with compressible data, that is). The MK4001GRZB falls right behind at 520 MB/s, which roughly matches the performance of the SSD 520 as it operates on incompressible data.
Although Toshiba's offering doesn't top this chart, it still outperforms the Micron P300, which plateaus at sequential read speeds of 450 MB/s.

Sequential 2 MB writes look a lot like the 128 KB chart without the impact of queue depth weighing on performance. The SandForce-based SSD 520 still reigns king when it comes to compressible data, though switching to incompressible information knocks Intel's newest desktop drive closer to the bottom of the chart.
Amongst the more purpose-built enterprise SSDs, Micron's P300 delivers the best performance at 350 MB/s. In comparison, Toshiba's MK4001GRZB falls a ways behind with speeds just shy of 300 MB/s.
- 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?"