LSI SAS 9300-8e & HGST Ultrastar SSD800MM: 12 Gb/s SAS, Tested

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With the announcement of LSI's SAS 9300-8e and HGST's Ultrastar SSD800MM earlier this year, the world was officially introduced to 12 Gb/s SAS. Today we get our first look at how two times the interface bandwidth translates to real-world performance.

Test Setup, Benchmarks, And Methodology

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Test Hardware
ProcessorIntel Core i7-3960X (Sandy Bridge-E), 32 nm, 3.3 GHz, LGA 2011, 15 MB Shared L3, Turbo Boost Enabled
MotherboardIntel DX79SI, X79 Express
MemoryG.Skill Ripjaws Z-Series (4 x 4 GB) DDR3-1600 @ DDR3-1600, 1.5 V
System DriveIntel SSD 320 160 GB SATA 3Gb/s
Host Bus AdapterLSI SAS 9300-8eLSI SAS 9207-8i
Tested DrivesHGST SSD800MM, 400 GB
GraphicsAMD FirePro V4800 1 GB
Power SupplyOCZ ModXStream Pro 700 W
System Software and Drivers
Operating SystemWindows 7 x64 Ultimate
DirectXDirectX 11
DriverGraphics: ATI 8.883
Benchmark Suite
Iometer v1.1.04 Workers, 4 KB Random: LBA=Full, Span Varying Queue Depths
ATTOv2.4.7, 2 GB, QD=4
CustomC++, 8 MB Sequential, QD=4
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Enterprise Testing: Iometer WorkloadsReadWrite512 Bytes1 KB2 KB4 KB8 KB16 KB32 KB64 KB128 KB512 KB
Database67%100%n/an/an/an/a100%n/an/an/an/an/a
File Server80%100%10%5%5%60%2%4%4%10%n/an/a
Web Server100%100%22%15%8%23%15%2%6%7%1%1%

The Storage Networking Industry Association (SNIA), a working group made up of SSD, flash, and controller vendors, has a testing procedure that attempts to control as many of the variables inherent to SSDs as possible. SNIA’s Solid State Storage Performance Test Specification (SSS PTS) is a great resource for enterprise SSD testing. The procedure does not define what tests should be run, but rather the way in which they are run. This workflow is broken down into four parts:

  1. Purge: Purging puts the drive at a known starting point. For SSDs, this normally means Secure Erase.
  2. Workload-Independent Preconditioning: A prescribed workload that is unrelated to the test workload.
  3. Workload-Based Preconditioning: The actual test workload (4 KB random, 128 KB sequential, and so on), which pushes the drive towards a steady state.
  4. Steady State: The point at which the drive’s performance is no longer changing for the variable being tracked.

These steps are critical when testing SSDs. It’s incredibly easy to not fully condition the drive and still observe out-of-box behavior, which may lead one to think that it’s steady-state. These steps are also important when going between random and sequential writes.

For all performance tests in this review, the SSS PTS was followed to ensure accurate and repeatable results.

All tests employ random data, when available. HGST's SSD800MM does not perform any data compression prior to writing, so there is no difference in performance-based data patterns.

Because we are not just reviewing the SSD800MM, but also LSI's SAS 9300-8e, we needed an HBA comparison as well. For that, we're using LSI's SAS 9207-8i and the built-in 6 Gb/s SATA ports on our Intel DX79SI motherboard. This will tell us how the new SAS 9300-8i compares to LSI's 6 Gb/s products, and how well the SSD800MM does at 6 Gb/s.

It should also be noted that our SAS 9300-8e isn't running production firmware. This didn't cause any issues, as far as we can tell, but LSI says there will be updates between now and when the card is commercially available.