While Intel's SSD 710 isn't a consumer drive, PCMark 7 and our own Storage Bench v1.0 provide a quick and dirty way to examine storage performance. If you're unfamiliar with Storage Bench v1.0, we'd suggest that you read page three and four of Second-Gen SandForce: Seven 120 GB SSDs Rounded Up.

The performance specs provided for the SSD 320 and 710 are remarkably close, which is why it isn't too surprising to see similar rankings. The 710 only falls behind the 320 by a small margin, which we'd attribute to the lower random write spec inherent to eMLC NAND. However, compared to Micron's SLC-based P300, Intel's latest enterprise SSD falls far behind.
While we have enthusiast-oriented drives in this chart for comparison, the SSD 710 isn't an enthusiast product. We get good perspective on how vendors balance performance and reliability, though, in adding drives that are faster, less expensive, but ultimately unsuited for enterprise duty to the results list.

- Intel On Enterprise Storage: No More SLC; Meet HET MLC
- Inside The SSD 710: Something Old And Something New
- HET MLC: Supercharged MLC Or SLC Lite?
- HET MLC: What Does Endurance Really Look Like?
- Test Setup And Firmware Notes
- Benchmark Results: Storage Bench v1.0 & PCMark 7
- Benchmark Results: 4 KB Random And 128 KB Sequential Performance
- Benchmark Results: Enterprise Performance
- Sequential Performance Versus Transfer Size
- Performance Over Time
- Intel's SSD 710: Making Enterprise Storage More Affordable?
Expect these to be the standard when they've dropped to 1/3rd their current price.
What happens when you RAID5 or RAID1 the SSD's??
I don't think any enterprise would trust a single SSD without RAID.
My Vertex 3 has been very reliable and I'm quite satisfied with the performance. However, I've heard reports that some, just like with anything else, haven't been so lucky.
SSDs are generally accepted to be more reliable than HDDs...at least that's what I've been lead to believe.
Yes, but when they die, that's it; you're done. You can at least send a mechanical HDD to Ontrack (or a competing data recovery service) with a GOOD chance of getting most or all of your data back; when a SSD bricks, what can be done?
The assumption is that ALL servers will have raid. The point of this article is how often will you have to replace the drives in your raid? All of that down time, and manpower has a price. If the old Intel SSDs were about as reliable as a traditional HDD, then that means that these new ones will last ~30x what a traidional drive does, while providing that glorious 0ms seek time, and high IO output.
Less replacement, less down time, less $/GB, and a similar performance is a big win in my book.
SSDs (at least on the enterprise level) are roughly equivalent to their mechanical brothers in failure rate. True, when the drive is done then the data is gone, but real data centers all use RAID, and backups for redundancy. Some go so far as to have all data being mirrored at 2 locations in real time, which is an extreme measure, but worth it when your data is so important.
Besides, when a data center has to do a physical recovery of a HDD then they have already failed. The down time it takes to physically recover is unacceptable in many data centers. Though at least it is still an option.
Its funny you mention that. Ontrack purports that they are quite adept at recovering SSDs.
Intel® SSD 710 Series 300/200/100GB
Random Read (8GB Span) = no info
Random Read (100% Span) = 38500/38500/38500 IOPS
Random Write (8GB Span) = no info
Random Write (100% Span) = 2000/2700/2300 IOPS
Intel® SSD 320 Series 600/300/160/120/80GB
Random Read (8GB Span) = 39500/39500/39000/38000/38000 IOPS
Random Read (100% Span) = 39500/39500/39000/38000/38000 IOPS
Random Write (8GB Span) = 23000/23000/21000/14000/10000 IOPS
Random Write (100% Span) = 150/400/600/400/300 IOPS
Read page 8. we covered that already.
My important info has a fresh original image and 2 daily backups that automatically create 12 hours apart. It takes about 5 minutes each and costs 29.99 a year. Come on people.