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if you have $10k, $6k for a 7TB

http://www.anandtech.com/show/10533/sam ... il-for-10k

As the article notes, it started shipping in limited quantities (at an undisclosed price) to select customers a few months ago. I remember seeing the announcement (and tend to follow this sort of stuff a bit more closely these days since I now work in the storage industry).

The price tag is about what I expected.

Call me when there are 2, 3, and 4 TB SSDs widely available at reasonable prices.

whm1974 wrote:

Call me when there are 2, 3, and 4 TB SSDs widely available at reasonable prices.

Define reasonable. It's already here for some people.

Actually for enterprise storage, 15.36 TB at $10k USD per drive is actually a good price. Consumer drives are roughly a third in terms of price per GB. This drive also features the enterprise focused SAS interface at 12 GBit/s so it is also noticeably faster than consumer drives. Only those using M.2 with 4x PCIe 3.0 lanes can rival it (though at a fraction of its capacity).

This drive also does something I was not expecting for another year or two: exceed the capacity of hard drives. Largest shipping to my knowledge is 10 TB. I wasn't expecting this transition to occur until next year after further advancements in flash production but Samsung did it by simply packing in lots of dies into packages and lots of packages on to PCBs.

I suspect that Samsung will be able to sell as many of these units as there is clear demand for drives like these in the enterprise sector.

I do think that the 7 TB model for $6,000 is over priced though.

Overall I'm very optimistic about where flash storage is going this year and next.

the wrote:

Overall I'm very optimistic about where flash storage is going this year and next.

As it is, we're already hit the point where whenever I need a replacement drive for an older laptop, I don't even consider spinning disks - 240GB SSDs are cheap enough, big enough for most people, they don't care about being dropped, they're much faster, and they're pretty reliable these days. It's a shame that OEMs keep using them in most computers.

It was only a matter of time before it started getting competitive in the enterprise as well.

the wrote:

This drive also does something I was not expecting for another year or two: exceed the capacity of hard drives.

Given how slow mechanical storage has been growing in capacity and how fast flash is- and how far behind flash is in terms of technology (in circuit trace widths)- that the transition would accelerate from where we thought it would be a year or two before should have been obvious.

It wasn't for me, either, but I was starting to realize that there was a bit of a change of momentum, so I wasn't entirely surprised when I saw the announcement.

@the -

Agreed on the price/GB. As I already noted, it is about what I expected.

On the capacity front, yeah it surprised me a little too. However, take a moment and reflect on the how high the density of flash memory has become; you can get 128GB on a SDXC card the size of your fingernail. Pack enough NAND chips together to get the capacity, wire them in parallel to get the transfer rate, and layer a crapload of ECC and some over provisioning on them to deal with the fact that they really aren't all that reliable at the individual cell/chip level, and I suspect the biggest issue is getting rid of the heat!

This device is really aimed at a niche -- high capacity, and ultra-low latency. In most cases, when you're storing massive quantities of data you don't care so much about latency. Who cares if that cloud server takes a few extra milliseconds to cough up the picture of your niece at that graduation party 5 years ago? Mechanical storage still rules for bulk storage; HDDs are the new tape.

It would not completely surprise me to see some larger form-factor (and possibly lower RPM) mechanical HDDs creep back into the mix, specifically for enterprise/cloud near-line applications. Maybe some double-height 3.25" HDDs, or even a return of the form factor used by the much ridiculed Quantum Bigfoot. The cost savings could be substantial for bulk storage, since you cut the number of spindle motors, HDD logic boards, and HDD interface ports on the server in half (or more).

Also, an aside... you seem to have one of the same writing tics as me, namely over-use of the word "actually". I mentally kick myself every time I catch myself doing it (which is still more frequently than I want to admit).

@localhostrulez -

Agree 100%. All laptops in the household (with one possible exception...) are SSD based now. Unless you've got a use case which is both cost-sensitive and capacity-hungry, putting a mechanical HDD in a mobile device these days is crazy. And for a desktop you should probably have a SSD for boot/system and mechanical for bulk storage, unless your storage needs are modest enough that you can get by with just a SSD at reasonable cost.

@Airmantharp -

Problem is, when you reduce the feature size on NAND, write endurance and data retention take a massive hit. We've already hit a wall there; this is why flash chips are moving to 3D tech, which backs off to a larger feature size, but stacks multiple layers of memory cells. This allows the individual cells to be larger, while still packing a lot of storage into a small space since the cells are stacked in a 3D structure instead of a single layer.

just brew it! wrote:

@localhostrulez -

Agree 100%. All laptops in the household (with one possible exception...) are SSD based now. Unless you've got a use case which is both cost-sensitive and capacity-hungry, putting a mechanical HDD in a mobile device these days is crazy. And for a desktop you should probably have a SSD for boot/system and mechanical for bulk storage, unless your storage needs are modest enough that you can get by with just a SSD at reasonable cost.

Having a HDD in a newer laptop (especially a thinner one) just feels weird to me - you can feel it vibrating/hear it just a little, which I'm no longer used to. Nice and silent during most use. (Seriously, the T560 felt slow and I could hear the HDD when I first booted it; as soon as I put an SSD in, it felt like it was suddenly at its full potential.) It's like me driving an automatic every now and then, and feeling it vibrating a bit from the torque converter spinning at a stop light (I was waiting in line at the dump earlier, and kept shifting to neutral when I was stopped for a while because it bugs me ever so slightly...).

I totally agree - I did 240GB SSD + 1TB HDD in the desktop. Nowadays I'm only on a laptop (often docked), and I splurged a little for a good 480GB drive (sandisk extreme pro... MLC I think). Got rid of a bunch of crap that I never used, and it turns out that I can fit things just fine on here. Keeps it simpler. For most, though, I find that a single 240GB is the sweet spot these days. You could get a 120GB, but meh... you're hardly going to notice the extra few bucks over the next few years, but you might have to live with space being tight all the time.

just brew it! wrote:

@Airmantharp -

Problem is, when you reduce the feature size on NAND, write endurance and data retention take a massive hit. We've already hit a wall there; this is why flash chips are moving to 3D tech, which backs off to a larger feature size, but stacks multiple layers of memory cells. This allows the individual cells to be larger, while still packing a lot of storage into a small space since the cells are stacked in a 3D structure instead of a single layer.

Sure!

But that's part of my point: they're so far behind that they have so much further to go. And when they do get good at shrinking the circuits? We're going to laugh at the capacities that mechanical storage limited us to .

whm1974 wrote:

Call me when there are 2, 3, and 4 TB SSDs widely available at reasonable prices.

over here the 2TB Samsung 850 EVO has the same price/GB as the 1TB 850 EVO, and the 4TB is only 10% above that, and all of them are available from a large number of online shops. Sure, they're not as cheap as the bottom scrapers like the Sandisk Ultra II but they're competitive depending on how much you value the extra performance and longevity that the 850 EVO has over budget TLC planar NAND drives. If you actually had an application for 4TB of solid state storage, you'd have bought one already because they're here in numbers for a reasonable price. They're not cheap yet, which I guess is what you're looking for

Firestarter wrote:

whm1974 wrote:

Call me when there are 2, 3, and 4 TB SSDs widely available at reasonable prices.

over here the 2TB Samsung 850 EVO has the same price/GB as the 1TB 850 EVO, and the 4TB is only 10% above that, and all of them are available from a large number of online shops. Sure, they're not as cheap as the bottom scrapers like the Sandisk Ultra II but they're competitive depending on how much you value the extra performance and longevity that the 850 EVO has over budget TLC planar NAND drives. If you actually had an application for 4TB of solid state storage, you'd have bought one already because they're here in numbers for a reasonable price. They're not cheap yet, which I guess is what you're looking for

I didn't say cheap, I said reasonable prices, like not an arm and leg.

whm1974 wrote:

Firestarter wrote:

If you actually had an application for 4TB of solid state storage, you'd have bought one already because they're here in numbers for a reasonable price. They're not cheap yet, which I guess is what you're looking for

I didn't say cheap, I said reasonable prices, like not an arm and leg.

They *are* pretty reasonable these days, all things considered. It's just that the cost/benefit tradeoff doesn't make sense for most people.

These would be really good for databases, logs etc. Stuff that is just too damn big to cram into ram or faster ssds, but you need to run an ugly ass regex or parse it. Would kill for a box of these at work, sadly our procurement is **** and we are still 100% spinning rust. The "magic" stuff (caching etc) that storage appliances do to accelerate spinning rust kind stops working when you use the whole thing.

For those that say "well just raid together the cheaper ssds" one of the working sets is ~100TB.

Bauxite wrote:

These would be really good for databases, logs etc. Stuff that is just too damn big to cram into ram or faster ssds, but you need to run an ugly ass regex or parse it. Would kill for a box of these at work, sadly our procurement is **** and we are still 100% spinning rust. The "magic" stuff (caching etc) that storage appliances do to accelerate spinning rust kind stops working when you use the whole thing.

For those that say "well just raid together the cheaper ssds" one of the working sets is ~100TB.

GAGH!!!

whm1974 wrote:

I didn't say cheap, I said reasonable prices, like not an arm and leg.

But they don't cost an arm and a leg, an 4TB Samsung 850 EVO costs only 11% more here than 4 1TB Samsung 850 EVOs. That's well within the range that if you actually wanted a 4TB SSD, you could justify buying one instead of 4 1TB ones. Yeah the sticker price is still high, but you get what you pay for which is at least 4 times as much as most other SSDs

whm1974 wrote:

Bauxite wrote:

These would be really good for databases, logs etc. Stuff that is just too damn big to cram into ram or faster ssds, but you need to run an ugly ass regex or parse it. Would kill for a box of these at work, sadly our procurement is **** and we are still 100% spinning rust. The "magic" stuff (caching etc) that storage appliances do to accelerate spinning rust kind stops working when you use the whole thing.

For those that say "well just raid together the cheaper ssds" one of the working sets is ~100TB.

GAGH!!!

My employer routinely deploys systems with upwards of 100PB of capacity. And yes, that's mostly spinning rust, for cost reasons.

We expect we'll have our first EB (exabyte) scale deployment in the not too distant future.

Exabyte SSD. Which nation's GDP matches up with the cost of such an array?

just brew it! wrote:

On the capacity front, yeah it surprised me a little too. However, take a moment and reflect on the how high the density of flash memory has become; you can get 128GB on a SDXC card the size of your fingernail. Pack enough NAND chips together to get the capacity, wire them in parallel to get the transfer rate, and layer a crapload of ECC and some over provisioning on them to deal with the fact that they really aren't all that reliable at the individual cell/chip level, and I suspect the biggest issue is getting rid of the heat!

The problem for capacity has always been one of parallelism and compatibility with modern flash chips. Going back to the early days of SSD where individual chips were tiny in comparison, controllers would have 16 buses to read/write from. Now consumer parts have four but are providing greater capacities due to the capacity gains of the flash chips themselves. I'd be nice if the newer flash chips could work with old SSD controllers but the flash market has evolved. Thus newer controllers are required and only the enterprise space does it make sense to create a controller supporting so many channels.

The main contributor for heat is the SSD controller itself. The flash chips themselves are relatively low power and thankfully are spread out over a wide area to make it easy for transfer if need be. Considering how data is spread across multiple dies in each package for this particular model, the entire package shouldn't see much activity beyond one or two dies simultaneously. (Chip density/power for flash is an issue in the small mobile form factors though.)

The speed of the individual flash chips has also been creeping upward too. 6 Gbit SATA was a limitation for burst reads shortly after the first 6 Gbit SSDs hit the market. This Samsung drive hits the limit of 12 Gbit SAS. I suspect that this controller is capable of feeding data at a far higher rate but is limited by the bus interface. Unfortunately we're waiting on U.2 to really hit the enterprise market and even then, 16x PCIe 3.0 cards are primed to the be high performance option. U.2 will be for the market that needs hot swap for greater reliability.

just brew it! wrote:

This device is really aimed at a niche -- high capacity, and ultra-low latency. In most cases, when you're storing massive quantities of data you don't care so much about latency. Who cares if that cloud server takes a few extra milliseconds to cough up the picture of your niece at that graduation party 5 years ago? Mechanical storage still rules for bulk storage; HDDs are the new tape.

Indeed. All the mass backup solutions I've seen used bulk hard drives in various arrays for recent storage. When I was working for a remote hosting facility, tape was isolated to weekly or monthly backup routines and sent offsite for archiving. Tape is the new mainframe from the storage world. It just won't die due to its particular niche. Holographic storage discs could displace tape but there is little motivation to develop an open standard since the enterprise market is the only sector that could make good use of it.

just brew it! wrote:

It would not completely surprise me to see some larger form-factor (and possibly lower RPM) mechanical HDDs creep back into the mix, specifically for enterprise/cloud near-line applications. Maybe some double-height 3.25" HDDs, or even a return of the form factor used by the much ridiculed Quantum Bigfoot. The cost savings could be substantial for bulk storage, since you cut the number of spindle motors, HDD logic boards, and HDD interface ports on the server in half (or more).

Double height 3.5" drives are technically possible but would only be good for proprietary systems. Current 2.5" and 3.5" form factors benefit from hot swap bays but increasing the z-height would break this. Same for unearthing the 5.25" form factor for hard drives. There is certainly a demand for bulk storage but at the rate SSDs are increasing in capacity while simultaneously dropping in prices, the time frame for these alternatives to makes sense is rapidly shrinking.

just brew it! wrote:

Also, an aside... you seem to have one of the same writing tics as me, namely over-use of the word "actually". I mentally kick myself every time I catch myself doing it (which is still more frequently than I want to admit).

You actually maybe right.

PS you should have gone to the BBQ.

whm1974 wrote:

Call me when there are 2, 3, and 4 TB SSDs widely available at reasonable prices.

Funny you say that. The $10k 15TB SSD works out to $0.66 per GB. The Samsung 950 Pro 256GB drive is $0.74 per GB by comparison. The 512GB model is around $0.62 so still not exactly much better if you inflate it up to a few terabytes.

My next purchase will be a 1TB SSD. Hopefully next year that can be had for something like $200-300. All rejoice the corporate overlords subsidizing my future purchases with their early adopter / high end / low yield / small market tax.

yogibbear wrote:

My next purchase will be a 1TB SSD. Hopefully next year that can be had for something like $200-300. All rejoice the corporate overlords subsidizing my future purchases with their early adopter / high end / low yield / small market tax.

I paid ~US$170 for a 960GB Sandisk Ultra II on Prime Day...

You should be able to beat that price for as nice of a drive or better by Black Friday.

https://www.backblaze.com/blog/seagate- ... -pod-next/

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2016/08/10 ... tb_qlc_ssd

Just picked up a 1 TB Mushkin Reactor SSD for $240 shipped from Amazon.com.

(sorry for the thread dredge...)