PCIe Storage?

[RexPowercolt]

Hi! I've been watching the youtube channel since christmas, and I finally decided to join the forums for this question specifically.

 

Ok, so it seems to me that lately, the world is moving toward SSD and higher storage speeds as a whole, as enthusiast users have known for a while.

 

My question is, Why isn't running a solid storage PCIe card a more popular option? I only found a few options under $500, and the rest were in the $3000-$20,000 range, obviously meant for large scale server implementation. True, the difference in speed would be lost on the average user, but we aren't exactly average users here, are we? Tell me what I missed that makes running say a 240GB SSD PCIe card a bad idea, assuming that price is no object. Depending on the number of lanes it utilized, this could drastically reduce startup times and large program/file load times for workstation/video editing use.

 

Thanks in advance, and thanks for the great videos.

[Tea1337]

I don't think a PCI-e ssd is worth the extra money, a ssd with windows 8 boot up is pretty darn fast the way it is

[RexPowercolt]

Its not worth the extra money now, but with consumer interest prices would come down as newer models were designed. Its just strange to see so few consumer level options, is all.

[wpirobotbuilder]

Its not worth the extra money now, but with consumer interest prices would come down as newer models were designed. Its just strange to see so few consumer level options, is all.

It's still relatively new tech, and it really doesn't offer much better performance than SATA ports (with the exception of enterprise workloads).

 

PCI-E is making gains in the enterprise world with guys like FusionIO, OCZ and Kingston, but there's very little reason for a regular person to get one.

[alpenwasser]

Also, from what I've read, getting those things to actually run nicely

can be a bit tricky with regards to drivers and such, apparently it's not

as simple as just plugging in an SSD into a SATA port. I can't recall

where, but I think I recently read from a guy who had two PCIe SSDs in

his system, but because of driver stuff his boot times were actually a

bit slower than with SATA SSDs. Once the system was up and running it

was definitely faster, but boot time was actually worse for him. Don't

recall where I came across that though, sorry.

[KingLich]

With the risk of turning into an SSD RAID evangelist, I think that if you really need Gigabyte-range read/write speeds for storage a regular SSD RAID will be cheaper and easier to handle than a PCI-e solution. At least for now.

[IdeaStormer]

Well there's other not so or not as expensive PCIe storage solutions.

 

http://linustechtips.com/main/topic/4198-1-pcie-slot-25-drive-solutions/

[RexPowercolt]

With the risk of turning into an SSD RAID evangelist, I think that if you really need Gigabyte-range read/write speeds for storage a regular SSD RAID will be cheaper and easier to handle than a PCI-e solution. At least for now.

 

I did not realize that RAID would increase the speed that much. I'm not a newbie but i have never done raid before.

[alpenwasser]

I did not realize that RAID would increase the speed that much. I'm not a newbie but i have never done raid before.

If you have a proper controller card and enough SATA SSDs, you can get a few GB/s

transfer speeds (depending on workload, obviously). But then, such a setup would

also be very expensive, just like an actual PCIe SSD (although probably less finicky

when it comes to drivers).

[DoubleY]

If you have a proper controller card and enough SATA SSDs, you can get a few GB/s

transfer speeds (depending on workload, obviously). But then, such a setup would

also be very expensive, just like an actual PCIe SSD (although probably less finicky

when it comes to drivers).

Don't you end up saturating the SATA controller around 1-2 GB/s? I thought somebody here told me that a while back. Maybe they were misinformed

 

 

Didn't realize you said controller card...

[alpenwasser]

Don't you end up saturating the SATA controller around 1-2 GB/s? I thought somebody here told me that a while back. Maybe they were misinformed

 

 

Didn't realize you said controller card...

Well, that's still a few GB/s, right?

But yes, eventually you'll run into a bottleneck somewhere. The card I'm using

(LSI 9211-8i) tops out at around 2.5 GB/s (with 8 SSDs running off of it) due to

PCIe 2.0 bandwidth limitations. I'm not sure how far a good controller could go

on a PCIe 3.0 interface. But a PCIe SSD will be run into the same problem.

EDIT:

Too slow.

[DoubleY]

Well, that's still a few GB/s, right?

But yes, eventually you'll run into a bottleneck somewhere. The card I'm using

(LSI 9211-8i) tops out at around 2.5 GB/s (with 8 SSDs running off of it) due to

PCIe 2.0 bandwidth limitations. I'm not sure how far a good controller could go

on a PCIe 3.0 interface. But a PCIe SSD will be run into the same problem.

EDIT:

Too slow.

I'm assuming you have an high end raid card (didn't even bother looking it up ) so it probably has a 16x interface? If so, it should top out at 8GB/s according to Wikipedia(http://www.soothetube.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/12/all.jpg). So I'm guessing that your Controller is the issue

 

But like you said, it's still a few GB/s, which is still more than plenty on anything but a server type workload.

[alpenwasser]

I'm assuming you have an high end raid card (didn't even bother looking it up ) so it probably has a 16x interface? If so, it should top out at 8GB/s according to Wikipedia(http://www.soothetube.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/12/all.jpg). So I'm guessing that your Controller is the issue

 

But like you said, it's still a few GB/s, which is still more than plenty on anything but a server type workload.

I think you pasted the wrong link there buddy.

But no, it's not that high-end. But yeah, looks like you might be onto something,

it's an 8 lane PCIe 2.0 controller, so looks like the bottleneck isn't actually

on the PCI-e side of things. I'd never bothered to look it up until now (since

I won't be running 8 SSDs anyway, so it's not really relevant for me ), I just

got the numbers from a guy on another forum.

If you want real bandwidth, take an 8-port 12 Gb/s SAS controller with some

Hitachi enterprise SSDs. (although I think those go for 4k~5k per piece,

so that's like 40k USD of SSDs lol )

[DoubleY]

I think you pasted the wrong link there buddy.

But no, it's not that high-end. But yeah, looks like you might be onto something,

it's an 8 lane PCIe 2.0 controller, so looks like the bottleneck isn't actually

on the PCI-e side of things. I'd never bothered to look it up until now (since

I won't be running 8 SSDs anyway, so it's not really relevant for me ), I just

got the numbers from a guy on another forum.

Maybe I meant to post that 

[RexPowercolt]

In that case, What RAID card would you reccommend for the best price/performance ratio?

[alpenwasser]

In that case, What RAID card would you reccommend for the best price/performance ratio?

The card I'm using is an LSI 9211-8i, but it's not really a proper RAID controller

as it doesn't have caching, it's just a host bus adapter, so you won't gain all

that much performance with random access patterns (if any? not sure). But, it can

be had on eBay for ~100 USD at the moment (got myself two). I'm not using it for

SSDs though, just for hooking up the drives to my ZFS pools.

@wpirobotbuilder or @IdeaStormer might be able to give a few better recommendations.

[wpirobotbuilder]

In that case, What RAID card would you reccommend for the best price/performance ratio?

If you are using SSDs, then any RAID controller will be fine. The reason to go with a better RAID controller with onboard cache and a backup battery is to improve random performance when using mechanical drives.

 

SSDs are already zippy, so you can get away with a lower-end RAID controller without performance degredation. LSI is very well regarded in the industry, so as long as your motherboard is compatible with the card you can use a RAID card like the one alpenwasser suggested. I recommend this one if you need only 4 drives, though.

[alpenwasser]

[...]

I recommend this one if you need only 4 drives, though.

One thing: If you try to get either this one or the 8-port model I have on eBay,

I have found the 8-port version to be available for quite a bit better prices,

just FYI. Presumably the market is quite flooded with the 8-port version, so

prices are lower on those than on the rarer 4-port model. This is just on eBay

though, not normal retailers of course (at least not the ones I've checked).