SAS SSD vs SATA SSD vs NVME SSD

[IBM_THINKPAD_R51]

So basically Sata revision 3 has a limit of 600MB/s and pretty much most SSD's can easily saturate that connection. The only way to even get close to that with just hard drives would be to RAID together a 4 15K RPM SAS drives in a RAID 0, (For fun obviously).

 

But Recently, I found out 2 things, one, the latest version of SAS supports 24GB/s at FULL DUPLEX, which means u can read and write at 24GB/s at the same time across the interface, Sata is only Half Duplex, so only 600MB/s in one direction.

 

And 2, SAS SSD's are a thing, tbh ive never heard of it until now, So disregarding price, how fast would a SAS SSD be?

 

Now i dont exactly know if the latest revision if SAS is as fast or faster the PCI express 4.0, but SAS  provides much more features for raid and parity like how sas can use multiple initiators, hot-plug, multi-path i/o, Sas has several data recovery features that work (i know from experience), etc

 

So i guess my question is, that if price was not a concern to you, u wanted the ultimate speed and reliability, would it be worth it to get like 4 SAS SSD's, raid them together, and get ultimate speeds, and the features of the SAS protocol??

 

[Electronics Wizardy]

5 minutes ago, IBM_THINKPAD_R51 said:

And 2, SAS SSD's are a thing, tbh ive never heard of it until now, So disregarding price, how fast would a SAS SSD be?

 

Fastest sas ssd I think is 12gbit.

 

6 minutes ago, IBM_THINKPAD_R51 said:

Now i dont exactly know if the latest revision if SAS is as fast or faster the PCI express 4.0, but SAS  provides much more features for raid and parity like how sas can use multiple initiators, hot-plug, multi-path i/o, Sas has several data recovery features that work (i know from experience), etc

 

Pcie is much faster, and lets you use nvme, which has much lower overhead than scsi commands. Also gen 4 x8 ssds have a link speed of 128gbit, much higher than any sas ssd.

 

8 minutes ago, IBM_THINKPAD_R51 said:

provides much more features for raid and parity like how sas can use multiple initiators, hot-plug, multi-path i/o

Pcie can do all of this aswel.. Dual host pcie ssds exist, and you can do pcie hot swap.

 

 

SAS ssds are a dying standard, get pcie nvme drives if you can, there better in basically every way.

 

[Radium_Angel]

8 minutes ago, IBM_THINKPAD_R51 said:

how fast would a SAS SSD be?

If this is to be belived:

https://business.kioxia.com/content/dam/kioxia/ncsa/en-us/microsites/hpe/asset/KIOXIA_Comparing_SSD_Interfaces_in_Servers_Best_Practices.pdf

bi-directionally at speeds up to 12Gb/s

 

Which is really darned fast. At that point I suspect the CPU would be the bottleneck to process all that data

[IBM_THINKPAD_R51]

5 minutes ago, Radium_Angel said:

If this is to be belived:

https://business.kioxia.com/content/dam/kioxia/ncsa/en-us/microsites/hpe/asset/KIOXIA_Comparing_SSD_Interfaces_in_Servers_Best_Practices.pdf

bi-directionally at speeds up to 12Gb/s

 

Which is really darned fast. At that point I suspect the CPU would be the bottleneck to process all that data

"Value SAS (vSAS) is a new category of SAS SSD media that is expected to replace SATA SSDs in server applications."

 

Well that an interesting quote, so then the real battle is between NVME and SAS, NVME would be faster, but SAS has more logic, and has its own dedicated controller and cache that the cpu and RAM doesnt even have to deal with.

[Radium_Angel]

Just now, IBM_THINKPAD_R51 said:

"Value SAS (vSAS) is a new category of SAS SSD media that is expected to replace SATA SSDs in server applications."

 

Well that an interesting quote, so then the real battle is between NVME and SAS, NVME would be faster, but SAS has more logic, and has its own dedicated controller and cache that the cpu and RAM doesnt even have to deal with.

Nice, of course, there is the price factor.

PCIe nVME is cheap, and SAS is (typically) the realm of servers, which means high prices because businesses can afford that, so I shudder to think of the pricetag on a new SAS SSD.

[IBM_THINKPAD_R51]

Just now, Radium_Angel said:

Nice, of course, there is the price factor.

PCIe nVME is cheap, and SAS is (typically) the realm of servers, which means high prices because businesses can afford that, so I shudder to think of the pricetag on a new SAS SSD.

oh yeah price is a big one, but i already have a SAS based-workstation with sas drives, better than sata hdd's and almost as good as sata ssd's, but looking for something faster

[Radium_Angel]

5 minutes ago, IBM_THINKPAD_R51 said:

oh yeah price is a big one, but i already have a SAS based-workstation with sas drives, better than sata hdd's and almost as good as sata ssd's, but looking for something faster

More power, never enough.

I have a SAS workstation as well, but PCIe nVME is faster still and much much cheaper.

[IBM_THINKPAD_R51]

1 minute ago, Radium_Angel said:

More power, never enough.

I have a SAS workstation as well, but PCIe nVME is faster still and much much cheaper.

LOL all of mine are filled DX, GPU, special sound card, capture device, and more more i dont think im allowed to say

[Electronics Wizardy]

19 minutes ago, IBM_THINKPAD_R51 said:

LOL all of mine are filled DX, GPU, special sound card, capture device, and more more i dont think im allowed to say

what workstation do you have? do you have u.2 or m.2 ports?

 

Sas ssds are good, but not not as good as pcie ssds.

 

 

[IBM_THINKPAD_R51]

Just now, Electronics Wizardy said:

what workstation do you have? do you have u.2 or m.2 ports?

 

Sas ssds are good, but not not as good as pcie ssds.

 

 

HP Z800 Workstation, and a Dell Poweredge R710 as my server that i also need more storage and speed on.

[Electronics Wizardy]

Just now, IBM_THINKPAD_R51 said:

HP Z800 Workstation, and a Dell Poweredge R710 as my server that i also need more storage and speed on.

I don't think those support 12gbit sas, so id get  a sas or sata ssd depending on what is cheaper. They will both preform about the same for your users

[IBM_THINKPAD_R51]

1 minute ago, Electronics Wizardy said:

I don't think those support 12gbit sas, so id get  a sas or sata ssd depending on what is cheaper. They will both preform about the same for your users

even if it supports 3GB/s sas thats way faster than sata, but im pretty sure it supports 6GB/s, TBH I was thinking of just getting a new computer, maybe a newer version of this same computer, like the Z820 or something.

[Electronics Wizardy]

3 minutes ago, IBM_THINKPAD_R51 said:

even if it supports 3GB/s sas thats way faster than sata, but im pretty sure it supports 6GB/s, TBH I was thinking of just getting a new computer, maybe a newer version of this same computer, like the Z820 or something.

Sas is normally 6gbit(the same as sata) or 12gbit, 2x the speed of sata. Your getting bits and bytes confuges.

 

If you get a newer system, id go pcie, its much faster in terms of iops, lantency,  and bandwidth. 

 

Also what are you using it for, I have a dual 2011 system, and its slower in most uses than my ryzen 3600xt desktops. Those systems really aren't that fast these days.

[IBM_THINKPAD_R51]

2 minutes ago, Electronics Wizardy said:

Sas is normally 6gbit(the same as sata) or 12gbit, 2x the speed of sata. Your getting bits and bytes confuges.

 

If you get a newer system, id go pcie, its much faster in terms of iops, lantency,  and bandwidth. 

 

Also what are you using it for, I have a dual 2011 system, and its slower in most uses than my ryzen 3600xt desktops. Those systems really aren't that fast these days.

yeah but i got my entire system with dual x5690's 36gb ram for only 300, then i got a gtx 1070 from a friend for 150. 

[IBM_THINKPAD_R51]

Just now, Fouk47 said:

Quick question:

I want to swap an ssd in a laptop with sata II. Between crucial BX/MX50O 120 or 256 GB , WD Green 120 GB or any other that is better wich one would you offer? I ask because i am concerned for the Wr-Rd speeds.

Tnks

just go with the highest capacity SSD you can get 

[IBM_THINKPAD_R51]

Just now, Fouk47 said:

yeah my concern isn't the amount of capacity but the speeds i can achive because we re speaking for a sata II base

 

all the SSD's will max out your sata 2 controller so just go with any size ssd you want

 

[Joel Pichette]

On 12/12/2020 at 9:22 PM, IBM_THINKPAD_R51 said:

So basically Sata revision 3 has a limit of 600MB/s and pretty much most SSD's can easily saturate that connection. The only way to even get close to that with just hard drives would be to RAID together a 4 15K RPM SAS drives in a RAID 0, (For fun obviously).

 

But Recently, I found out 2 things, one, the latest version of SAS supports 24GB/s at FULL DUPLEX, which means u can read and write at 24GB/s at the same time across the interface, Sata is only Half Duplex, so only 600MB/s in one direction.

 

And 2, SAS SSD's are a thing, tbh ive never heard of it until now, So disregarding price, how fast would a SAS SSD be?

 

Now i dont exactly know if the latest revision if SAS is as fast or faster the PCI express 4.0, but SAS  provides much more features for raid and parity like how sas can use multiple initiators, hot-plug, multi-path i/o, Sas has several data recovery features that work (i know from experience), etc

 

So i guess my question is, that if price was not a concern to you, u wanted the ultimate speed and reliability, would it be worth it to get like 4 SAS SSD's, raid them together, and get ultimate speeds, and the features of the SAS protocol??

 

Yes totally worth it. Especially on the used market on ebay.

 

I have bought 2 400gb sas ssd that I have installed in raid 0.

 

On the 3gbps marvell onboard sas, They did around 400 mb/s in raid0 (maxed out by the 3gbps interface)

On a 6gbps adaptec ast-6805t 8 port sas controller with 512 mb cache ram, I get 800 mb/s on huge files.

The benchmark says that speed is 415-525 mb/s on small 10mib blocks, but on real files it's 800 mb/s steady.

The Write speed is about the same or a little faster than read speed.

 

So Yeah do it, buy sas ssd drives if they're cheap on ebay, it's totally worth the fun,

just make sure the controller is 6gbps or faster

and the drives are identical.

 

My kubuntu 20.04 boots in under 2 seconds on a dual cpu machine with 12 cores 24 threads (2 xeon x5670 @ 2.93 ghz)

Ram is 24 gb in triple channel ddr3 1333, registered and ecc parity check (12 gb per cpu)

Gpu is AMD R9 380, power supply is from Lenovo D20, 1060 watts

 

Notes:

1. My machine won't allow for a nvme to be the boot partition

2. SATA ssd can't boot on the onboard sas-sata marvell controller on my Lenovo D20

3. No hardware raid for SATA ssd on the onboard marvell controller on my Lenovo D20

4. SAS ssd have no issues on the onboard sas-sata marvell controller.

5. There is a boot partition size limit of 2 tb on the marvell controller on my motherboard.

6. Using an external 6gbps sas controller on a pcie 4x slot solves every issues reported here

and doubles the speed of the onboard 3gbps marvell chipset.