Results: Enterprise Video Streaming Performance
Video streaming is a demanding workload within the enterprise space. Companies want more HD streams with higher bit-rates and no stuttering. A storage solution well-suited for enterprise-class video delivery has completely different capabilities than something designed for databases. At the end of the day, you're basically looking for exceptional large-block sequential write performance. You also need a high level of consistency that traditionally isn't seen from consumer SSDs. For a more in-depth analysis, take a look at page 10 of Intel SSD 910 Review: PCI Express-Based Enterprise Storage.
As we saw in our sequential testing, the M500DC does not post a very high sequential write rate. But what it lacks in throughput is more than made up for by consistency.
The graph above is highly averaged, with each point representing 800 MB, but the consistency is still evident. In fact, the range from peak to trough is roughly +/- 1% of the average. We run this test 100 times on each drive, and every cycle looks exactly like the chart we're showing you.
Due to limits of Excel, I can't chart out the individual 8 MB writes, but I assure you that they're incredibly consistent. In fact, in order to maintain 400 MB/s (which is 25 MB/s higher than Micron's spec), we only need a 32 MB buffer. That is outstanding.
