[Info-vax] 3rd party SATA SSD usage on RX2660+P400 in a production environment?

[Mark DeArman]

On Fri, 28 Jun 2019 09:36:37 -0700 (PDT), Rod Regier
<rregier at dymaxion.ca> wrote:

>Has anyone used 3rd party 2.5" SATA SSD's 
>(like say the Samsung 860 EVO or earlier)
>on a RX2660 system equipped with a P400 BBWC RAID controller 
>in a production environment?
>
>https://www.samsung.com/us/computing/memory-storage/solid-state-drives/ssd-860-evo-2-5--sata-iii-250gb-mz-76e250b-am/
>
>The factor of 16+ price difference between the new HPE SAS SSD offering versus
>the new Samsung EVO 860 family (both 2.5") makes this an attractive option.
>
>N9X95A        - $US3133 MSRP
>MZ-76E250B/AM -   $US57 from Amazon.com
>
>
>Today I did a test using a similar SATA SSD on such a configuration
>and I was able to boot OpenVMS and successfully run the HP Diskblock benchmark
>on that SATA SSD drive and on a 10KRPM SAS drive for comparison.
>
>Impressive benchmark improvement with the SSD.
>
>What worries me about such usage is lack of TRIM and some of the more subtle functions for the SATA SSD under OpenVMS in the long term.  The P400 controller itself is rated to support SATA drives.
>
>https://h20195.www2.hpe.com/v2/GetPDF.aspx/c04111741.pdf
>
>"3G SAS technology delivers high performance and data bandwidth up to 300 MB/s per physical link and contains full compatibility with 1.5G SATA technology."
>
>I would suspect that the controller handles most of the general SAS vs SATA issues.  HPE SAS$UTIL display shows SATA and SAS identifiers when displaying the characteristics of the attached drives.
>
>               \\
>
>Diskblock stats with a 100MBy contiguous test file for each:
>
>RX2660/1x1.6, P400 BBWC RAID controller, 1x10KRPM SAS disk as JBOD
>
>Total I/Os completed:    106178
>Run time:                120 Seconds
>I/Os per second:         884.8
>mS per I/O:                1.1
>Throughput:              442.4 KBytes per second
>
>RX2660/1x1.6, P400 BBWC RAID controller, 1XSSD SATA disk as JBOD
>
>Total I/Os completed:    1017417
>Run time:                120 Seconds
>I/Os per second:         8478.5
>mS per I/O:                0.1
>Throughput:              4239.2 KBytes per second
>
>
> 

OT but keep in mind that most SATA disks bugger up the cooling policy
on C3000/7000 enclosures.  This can be quite a big of increased power
consumption.  Not sure if other systems pull the disk temperature data
into their fan control loop through the smart array controller, but
I'm sure it wouldn't be as big of an issue on a single system.

Mark