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

Features
By Drew Riley
published

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.

Results: Enterprise Workload Performance

Our next set of tests simulates different enterprise-oriented workloads, including database, file server, Web server, and workstation configurations.

Because LSI's SAS 9300-8e and Intel's native SATA controller treats the SSD DC S3700 so similarly, we're only showing the X79 chipset's results as reference at 6 Gb/s.

The database workload (also categorized as transaction processing) involves purely random I/O. Its profile consists of 67% reads and 33% writes using 8 KB transfers.

The file server workload consists of 80% reads at varying transfer sizes.

The Web server test generates 100% reads at varying transfer sizes.

Our workstation test is 80% reads that are 80% random.

With the SSD800MM capable of generating nearly two times the performance of Intel's SSD DC S3700, you might have guessed the gains that'd show up in our enterprise workloads. Transferring over a 12 Gb/s link, the SSD800MM is consistently 50-100% faster than Intel's 6 Gb/s enterprise drive. Even limited to 6 Gb/s, the SSD800MM is at least 30% faster.

We usually only see results like these from PCI Express-based add-in cards. In fact, HGST's SSD800MM is only a little slower than Intel's SSD 910. When you consider that $2000 (for a comparable 400 GB model) card came out almost a year ago, it's amazing that a single 2.5" SSD can already come close to catching up.

Drew Riley
13 Comments Comment from the forums
  • slomo4sho
    Now only if this technology was viable for home builds. :( Maybe in a couple years?
    Reply
  • major-error
    The performance and relative maturity of this prototype drive certainly is impressive, but this is what the enterprise space demands.
    At the consumer level though, the article takes on a completely different tone--I would be very surprised if we don't start seeing mention of PCIe4 at/before the top of the next CPU cycle (so, in 24-36 months at most.)
    Reply
  • raidtarded
    Actually, Adaptec already saturated PCIe 3.0 with 6GB/s. The chart is incorrect, it doesn't take 12Gb/s to saturate the PCIe bus. Well, not for Adaptec.
    Reply
  • falcompsx
    Remember when mechanical hard drives struggled to saturate their interfaces? Times sure have changed with SSD tech.
    Reply
  • CaedenV
    11006286 said:
    The performance and relative maturity of this prototype drive certainly is impressive, but this is what the enterprise space demands.
    At the consumer level though, the article takes on a completely different tone--I would be very surprised if we don't start seeing mention of PCIe4 at/before the top of the next CPU cycle (so, in 24-36 months at most.)

    Ya, my bet is that we will not start to see SATA4 or PCIe4 until Skymont at the earliest. Considering it is looking like Broadwell may be pushed back due to 14nm die shrink issues I would bet that Skymont will have similar issues when moving to 10nm. But at least for home users you can cram 2 SSDs in RAID0 with a proper RAID card and get a little performance boost until then. I guess the only problem is that most people are going to use the onboard Intel RAID for RAID0, which will get you a killer synthetic benchmark, but in practical reality it is really just expanding your volume with very little speed benefit.
    Reply
  • kj3639
    Go HGST! WOO!!!!
    Reply
  • bit_user
    * wipes drool off floor *

    That's a quality review of some quality products. I like the insights shared, throughout. I especially appreciated the link to the SATA-Express paper. Thanks!

    MORE REVIEWS LIKE THIS!!
    :)
    Reply
  • bit_user
    11006482 said:
    Actually, Adaptec already saturated PCIe 3.0 with 6GB/s. The chart is incorrect, it doesn't take 12Gb/s to saturate the PCIe bus. Well, not for Adaptec.
    How many ports and how many lanes, though? If it's just a 8-port card, the math doesn't support that, as 6x8 = 48 Gbps, which is less than the 8 x 8 = 64 Gbps that a x8 PCIe 3.0 slot should carry.
    Reply
  • raidtarded
    It is the equivalent of a nuke bomb compared to the LSI products. It has 24 Native ports.
    11011736 said:
    11006482 said:
    Actually, Adaptec already saturated PCIe 3.0 with 6GB/s. The chart is incorrect, it doesn't take 12Gb/s to saturate the PCIe bus. Well, not for Adaptec.
    How many ports and how many lanes, though? If it's just a 8-port card, the math doesn't support that, as 6x8 = 48 Gbps, which is less than the 8 x 8 = 64 Gbps that a x8 PCIe 3.0 slot should carry.

    Reply
  • raidtarded
    It is a 24 port native raid controller. smokes the 4 ports.
    Reply