Recommendation for enterprise SSD's?

[jnussbaum]

I'm planning a new build, mainly for home use as a media server, backup box, and small homelab. For apps and VMs, I was planning to use a mirrored pair of 1TB NVMe SSD's. I hadn't thought much about what to get, figuring it wouldn't matter much for my straightforward needs, but now I'm starting to worry, partly because of comments like this from a few minutes ago, which starts with "The issue with consumer SSD's is that generally they suck", which is what got me to post this now. But I'm not actually clear on what "enterprise SSD's" are—Googling isn't really that helpful either. Can someone recommend brands/models that would be appropriate for this? I really only need 1TB drives, and I don't need the most absolute blazing speed. But I'd like to get something that I can trust, and not have to worry about.

 

[firesyde424]

Consumer SSD's don't "suck", they are just meant for a different use case than enterprise SSDs. In general, most SSDs will slow down once their cache is exhausted.

Enterprise drives are typically built around the concept of risk mitigation. They will usually contain things like power loss protection, native encryption hardware, secure erase capabilities, namespace capabilities, as well as others. In general, they are built more for datacenters and will use form factors such as U.2\U.3 that are more suited for servers. They typically can also be had in high write endurance models whereas most consumer drives are just one type and that's it.

That's not to say that you can't find drives with some or all of these features that are targeted at consumers, but in general, consumer SSDs are built for typical home workloads like general operating system tasks and gaming. They are built more for performance than longevity or consistency.

For the vast majority of home users, and even TrueNAS home users, the extra cost of an Enterprise SSD isn't worth the additional benefits. So long as you stick to good designs for your storage pools, there's no reason a consumer grade SSD won't work for you.

 

[Patrick M. Hausen]

If you can still get e.g. Samsung 970 EVO Plus, they definitely don't suck.

 

[Davvo]

Avoiding U.3 is also a good thing.

 

[joeschmuck]

I'm planning a new build, mainly for home use as a media server, backup box, and small homelab. For apps and VMs, I was planning to use a mirrored pair of 1TB NVMe SSD's.

A few things here... NVMe's only suck if you buy something not reputable. It can be a gamble so buy something with a reasonable warranty. I purchased six 4TB NVMe Gen 4 drives for $200 USD each. My first 2TB drives we slightly under that price 12 years ago. Not saying you should buy six 4TB NVMe drives.

Questions:
1) Media Server, Backup Box, Small Home Lab. What medium do you plan to use here? Hard drives, SSD, NVMe? And what ZFS configuration?
2) VM's for apps. Do you plan to run apps such as TrueCharts and/or spin your own VM's and run them on TrueNAS? And store them on a NVMe?

I'm asking these questions because before you spend your money, you should have a game plan. When I think Home Lab, I think of a quickly responding system, which means fast drive speeds, either SSD or NVMe (which is SSD but PCIe interface). I also think of using ESXi to run VM's, vice TrueNAS.

A media server could be using one or more hard drives, it depends on how much data you need to store and how much redundancy (failure protection) you need.

I'm with @Patrick M. Hausen , The Samsung 970 EVO works pretty well, I have no complaints from one in my personal computer. Again, reputable name, and warranty. And look at some reviews, just notice who is writing it. I look at several different places for a review of a product and if all matches, then I can say the reviews were not very biased (a good thing). It can be tricky. I know people come here asking if drive XYZ is a good drive, they are hoping someone will save them the headache of researching the products as well as hearing some personal experience.

So my long message is: Figure out what storage medium you want for the different use cases you are planning for. Research it. And if you only need 4TB or storage total, you could buy a pair of 4TB SSDs and mirror those.

Notes on warranty: A warranty can be designated to last a specific period of time (ex. 5 Years), or by how many TB can be written to the drive (xyz TB Written), or more often both, 5 years or XYZ TB, whichever comes first.

 

[jnussbaum]

A few things here... NVMe's only suck if you buy something not reputable. It can be a gamble so buy something with a reasonable warranty. I purchased six 4TB NVMe Gen 4 drives for $200 USD each. My first 2TB drives we slightly under that price 12 years ago. Not saying you should buy six 4TB NVMe drives.

Questions:
1) Media Server, Backup Box, Small Home Lab. What medium do you plan to use here? Hard drives, SSD, NVMe? And what ZFS configuration?
2) VM's for apps. Do you plan to run apps such as TrueCharts and/or spin your own VM's and run them on TrueNAS? And store them on a NVMe?

I'm asking these questions because before you spend your money, you should have a game plan. When I think Home Lab, I think of a quickly responding system, which means fast drive speeds, either SSD or NVMe (which is SSD but PCIe interface). I also think of using ESXi to run VM's, vice TrueNAS.

A media server could be using one or more hard drives, it depends on how much data you need to store and how much redundancy (failure protection) you need.

Thanks very much. I'm sorry, I gave what I thought was the relevant info, without wasting space on stuff I thought didn't matter.

For my main storage pool, I'm planning 2-disk mirrors of spinning rust. I haven't decided the exact parameters (how many mirrors, how large), but I genuinely don't think it's relevant for this question.

This pool would be for, yes, TrueCharts apps and a couple of my own small VM's. This wouldn't be for very serious stuff, for which I might look at an ESXi or Proxmox solution, so perhaps "homelab" was a bit of a reach. Running these on TrueNAS will be fine for my needs, but I do want SSDs rather than spinners. I do think that a mirrored pair of 1TB drives is all I need; obviously if 2TB or 4TB drives are extremely affordable, I'd pay a few extra dollars for them, but I don't really need them. But for this purpose, again, I want fast speed, NVMe I assume.

Two of you have recommended the 970 EVO; is there any reason to avoid the 980 or 990? I was assuming that newer models would be better, all things being equal. And are these "enterprise", or am I asking an irrelevant question or one I don't understand?

Thank you!

 

[Patrick M. Hausen]

I don't know all the details from the top of my head but the 970 Evo Plus deliver solid constant performance. Early tests of the newer models showed that Samsung went the way of combining slower flash with small internal caches leading to dropping transfer rates for continuous writes. How much of this is still the case you need to research yourself, sorry. Sometimes new controller firmware can fix some of these issues, sometimes the fundamental design just is what it is.

I can only say that the 970 are solid, specifically for a VM/jail/app pool. They also have a very good TBW (endurance) value. Make sure to buy the "Plus" models.

Better Samsung models are sometimes referred to as "prosumer" and they are good enough for me and for my company to use in our hosting servers. "Real enterprise SSDs" are a completely different category and you probably don't want them for your home NAS because they are an order of magnitude more expensive and frequently also need special connectivity like SAS or U.x not common in home systems.

Enterprise SSD | SSD | Samsung Semiconductor Global

Samsung Enterprise SSDs for high-capacity workloads deliver outstanding performance and vast capacity. Meet enterprise SSD products such as PM1743 and PM1653.

semiconductor.samsung.com

Intel® SSD Data Center Family

Intel® SSD Data Center Family for the enterprise and servers provides high performance while keeping up with ever-increasing infrastructure demands.

www.intel.com

Look at e.g. this one - 1.5 TB capacity, >5000$ list price. That's an enterprise SSD.

 

[joeschmuck]

I don't recall which one, the 980 or 990 but Samsung did a switch, they initially build one with a cache I think it was, send it out to those folks who test and recommend a product, then change the manufacturing process and removed the cache. I think that was the story. While the 980 was still good, lack of a cache can be problematic depending on use case. I do think it was the 980, but you can do a Google Search.

I do like Samsung product as a general rule, although I'm not too pleased with my OLED TV from time to time. I need to report the issue formally to them, they need a software patch.

There are other consumer grade products out there, do the research and you may find something you like.

 

[MrGuvernment]

I don't recall which one, the 980 or 990 but Samsung did a switch, they initially build one with a cache I think it was, send it out to those folks who test and recommend a product, then change the manufacturing process and removed the cache. I think that was the story. While the 980 was still good, lack of a cache can be problematic depending on use case. I do think it was the 980, but you can do a Google Search.

I do like Samsung product as a general rule, although I'm not too pleased with my OLED TV from time to time. I need to report the issue formally to them, they need a software patch.

There are other consumer grade products out there, do the research and you may find something you like.

980 and 990 PRO lines both have cache, the normal line I think it was the 980. Several makers have done this, they send out the top end units to sites, and then a couple months later, change parts and claim it is the same.

 

[ChrisRJ]

But I'd like to get something that I can trust, and not have to worry about.

Can you be more specific here? What are requirements about reliability? It really is very different things to different people.

 

[Daisuke]

I’m using Samsung PM883 SSDs which have enterprise grade wear endurance, they are affordable on eBay.