SSD for NAS

[GirlFromYonder]

I might by a NAS soon (if i get the money) so my question is if i can use the ssd as the drive all the data first goes on and then it gets transferred to the hdd later?

[bandon]

Depending on what NAS you buy, it might have SSD caching capability. This should automatically do what you are looking for.

[GirlFromYonder]

45 minutes ago, bandon said:

Depending on what NAS you buy, it might have SSD caching capability. This should automatically do what you are looking for.

i will be build my own

[jj9987]

Yes, you can.

 

Though in my case, I do not see any speed difference, whether copying to SSD or to HDD over 1 Gbps network (~110 MB/sec).

[b1uew01f]

On 08/09/2016 at 3:35 PM, jj9987 said:

Yes, you can.

 

Though in my case, I do not see any speed difference, whether copying to SSD or to HDD over 1 Gbps network (~110 MB/sec).

This is the key point, for any HDD's from the past few years atleast, your bottleneck is most likely to be your local network. Upgrading to a 10G network is still pretty expensive too.

[jabolotai]

You can set up SSD caching in multiple ways, like Read only or Read/Write. Each has pros and cons for speed vs data integrity.

Depending on your usage patterns you might not see much (any?) performance boost, but in some situations it will help. I'd get the base nas tuned and bench-marked before adding cache personally as there are many other things (like protocol choice) that can easily eclipse any gains cache will give.

[Mr_Flynn]

On 9/9/2016 at 10:44 PM, b1uew01f said:

This is the key point, for any HDD's from the past few years atleast, your bottleneck is most likely to be your local network. Upgrading to a 10G network is still pretty expensive too.

An SSD would still help if he has a lot of clients hitting the same file or files, even if his network is limited to 1GB.

[b1uew01f]

On 13/09/2016 at 8:20 AM, Mr_Flynn said:

An SSD would still help if he has a lot of clients hitting the same file or files, even if his network is limited to 1GB.

How? You can't fit anything more through the ethernet cable. Even if you have an infinitely fast ssd, no more Data can be sent through the ethernet cable. Unless you have teaming set uo or similar which is a whole other question.

[Dark]

On 9/26/2016 at 7:16 PM, b1uew01f said:

How? You can't fit anything more through the ethernet cable. Even if you have an infinitely fast ssd, no more Data can be sent through the ethernet cable. Unless you have teaming set uo or similar which is a whole other question.

It has nothing to do with bandwidth.  You get almost instant response times with solid state and faster random read/writes.  

For a sustained large file transfer over a 1gb network, both a platter and an SSD will saturate the pipe. 

[Mikensan]

On 9/26/2016 at 7:16 PM, b1uew01f said:

How? You can't fit anything more through the ethernet cable. Even if you have an infinitely fast ssd, no more Data can be sent through the ethernet cable. Unless you have teaming set uo or similar which is a whole other question.

Simple. IOPS. Transferring a single file, yes you'll hit maximum gigabit speeds. Transfer a bunch of little files to/from a mechanical drive, or just a bunch of files period, speeds will plummet. Mechanical drives measure IOPS in the hundreds for higher end drives, SSDs measure in the thousands even on the cheapest.

[b1uew01f]

On 28/09/2016 at 8:49 PM, Mikensan said:

Simple. IOPS. Transferring a single file, yes you'll hit maximum gigabit speeds. Transfer a bunch of little files to/from a mechanical drive, or just a bunch of files period, speeds will plummet. Mechanical drives measure IOPS in the hundreds for higher end drives, SSDs measure in the thousands even on the cheapest.

Granted you're correct however I don't believe your reasoning even vaguely matches the OP's situation. 

 

Seems like a pretty basic set of requirements and for that an ssd will in all likelihood appear to perform identically to a reasonable quality hdd.

 

I get (as far as is noticeable) instant response on all of my storage arrays, and they're hdds in raid6.

[Jarsky]

You guys are theoretically correct, but in practice on a home network which this appears to be from the wording, its not going to make any difference on a gigabit network. Unless hes constantly going to be having like 20 person LAN's, but again - you'll probably hit 1Gbps before IOPS become an issue if its a multi disk array. 

 

But yeah SSD caching depends on how you build your NAS.

Many hardware RAID cards support SSD caching like the LSI 9271-8i

Storage Spaces you can dedicated an SSD as a persistant cache

FreeNAS uses your memory as a read cache, so if you have enough memory overhead, theres no need for an SSD - unless you want ZIL for write caching.

 

As pointed out above by @jabolotai, you have both a READ or a READ/WRITE. If you're using a write-back caching which is the highest performance, then you must have power backup, or you risk data loss / degredation in the event of a brown out / power loss.

 

Generally caching is only needed for storage to application services - so typically business use - really isnt much benefit unless youre planning to get some beefy hardware for VM's with applications etc....

[Mikensan]

11 hours ago, b1uew01f said:

Granted you're correct however I don't believe your reasoning even vaguely matches the OP's situation. 

 

Seems like a pretty basic set of requirements and for that an ssd will in all likelihood appear to perform identically to a reasonable quality hdd.

 

I get (as far as is noticeable) instant response on all of my storage arrays, and they're hdds in raid6.

Was only replying to your previous comment. And who knows what OP will be transferring, it's not about how fast it responds it's about transfer speeds dropping when you transfer large number of files. One example is you can host a minecraft server and throw on dynmap which creates thousands of tiles/png files - transfer a folder with thousands of 10kb files and even a SSD will drop down to only a few mbps.

 

Just setting reasonable expectations, it really depends on use. I agree, majority of people won't see a benefit with a SSD cache - but it doesn't heart knowing more or understanding limitations and then letting OP make their decision vs assuming what he will be doing from a single post and saying he won't benefit. Explain it entirely and then let him decide. It's good to understand the technology.

[matrix07012]

I think it is not really worth it if the NAS will have only a 1Gbps connection.