Enterprise SSD's are now TLC???

Zarathustra[H]

Zarathustra[H]

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I just got this marketing email blast from SuperMicro telling the world they are selling Enteprise SSD's

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What stood out to me is that they are calling these "Enterprise Drives", but every last one of them is TLC.

Is that really what is being used in Enterprise applications these days? Maybe I am nuts, but I expected enterprise drives to be at least MLC.


Enterprise has always stayed one level above typical consumer drives. When SSD's first entered the consumer space, they were all MLC, and enterprise drives were SLC.

Now TLC is the most common in the consumer space, and has been for a while, with enterprise drives being MLC.

Sure, QLC exists, but IMHO it's barely good enough for heavy consumer use, and I wouldn't have expected TLC to be good enough for demanding Enterprise applications quite yet (or maybe even ever)

Is that really where we are now?
 
Zarathustra[H] said:
I just got this marketing email blast from SuperMicro telling the world they are selling Enteprise SSD's

View attachment 504052

What stood out to me is that they are calling these "Enterprise Drives", but every last one of them is TLC.

Is that really what is being used in Enterprise applications these days? Maybe I am nuts, but I expected enterprise drives to be at least MLC.


Enterprise has always stayed one level above typical consumer drives. When SSD's first entered the consumer space, they were all MLC, and enterprise drives were SLC.

Now TLC is the most common in the consumer space, and has been for a while, with enterprise drives being MLC.

Sure, QLC exists, but IMHO it's barely good enough for heavy consumer use, and I wouldn't have expected TLC to be good enough for demanding Enterprise applications quite yet (or maybe even ever)

Is that really where we are now?
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Yes
 
Zarathustra[H] said:
I just got this marketing email blast from SuperMicro telling the world they are selling Enteprise SSD's


Is that really where we are now
Click to expand...
Yes, but with the latest controllers they tamp down write amplification and are very good at not burning the SSD. In use cases where the writes are punishing, you can go with a higher lifetime drive but it isn't as big a difference as it used to be (between SLC and MLC for example.) You can still get SLC and MLC IBM drives (for some outrageous numbers out of their mainframe division if you ABSOLUTELY need them.)
 
mwroobel said:
Yes, but with the latest controllers they tamp down write amplification and are very good at not burning the SSD. In use cases where the writes are punishing, you can go with a higher lifetime drive but it isn't as big a difference as it used to be (between SLC and MLC for example.) You can still get SLC and MLC IBM drives (for some outrageous numbers out of their mainframe division if you ABSOLUTELY need them.)
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Ugh.

That's a shame. And there I was hugely disappointed when Samsung's 980 Pro went TLC instead of the MLC the pro drives used to be.

I guess if you needed to, you could probably mimic the write endurance of an MLC drive by simply going TLC, and partitioning it smaller than it's actual size. This ought to increase the write endurance somewhat. The question is if the write speeds will keep up, or if the write cache eventually runs out, and the slow TLC writes become evident.
 
Zarathustra[H] said:
you could probably mimic the write endurance of an MLC drive by simply going TLC, and partitioning it smaller than it's actual size.
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The total endurance (not the manufacturer claim, but how long the flash will actually last) doesn't change when you do this, but the apparent endurance per bit (DWPD) does go up. In essence, you're artificially limiting your storage capacity against your ability to keep your drive usage in check.


What I'd like to see of enterprise drives (and all drives, really) is the ability to force the flash into a lower bit mode, i.e. set a TLC drive to be MLC or completely SLC, which reduces capacity, but can increase absolute endurance of the flash and write performance at the cost of space.
 
Grebuloner said:
What I'd like to see of enterprise drives (and all drives, really) is the ability to force the flash into a lower bit mode, i.e. set a TLC drive to be MLC or completely SLC, which reduces capacity, but can increase absolute endurance of the flash and write performance at the cost of space.
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That would be a cool capability.

I mean, we know the ability already exists, as some TLC and QLC drives dynamically reallocate space as MLC and even SLC caches.
Giving th euser the choice to set this for a given drive would be a great level of flexibility.

Imagine buying a drive. You can configure it as either:

1.) a 2TB TLC drive
2.) a 1.3TB MLC drive
3.) a 670MB SLC drive

or if you are feeling really crazy:

4.) a 2.6TB QLC drive.

Let us decide ourselves how we want to use those precious cells.

It would likely require a slightly larger and more complex controller, but I can live with paying for that. I'd love this.

Heck, maybe you could even just have the same size ROM on the drive, and just flash it with the appropriate firmware. A TLC ROM, an MLC ROM, an SLC ROM, etc.

That would be amazing.

If it were an otherwise good drive, and th ecost penalty weren't TOO extreme, I'd totally buy this drive every time going forward.
 
Manufacturing economies of scale will essentially no longer allow dual cell MLC anymore to be business competitive. As others have said better controllers are allowing astronomical performance with TLC. I mean there are TLC drives now that are faster than old school SLC Fusion I/O drives that were the best of the best in their day.

Technology marches on.
 
Give it 6 or 8 years and we'll be going "I miss the days of QLC..."
 
Dan_D said:
Fucking Fusion IO. The fucking bane of my existence.
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We ran a ton of ZFS Z2/Z3 with FusionIO SLOG's and they were great!!!! If you put them in a dark room, away from stray electromagnetic waves, on the second shelf, rotated 178 degrees exactly on a Tuesday. Other than that when they worked well they were spectacular, when they flaked you tore your hair out (probably why I am almost bald now!)
 
mwroobel said:
We ran a ton of ZFS Z2/Z3 with FusionIO SLOG's and they were great!!!! If you put them in a dark room, away from stray electromagnetic waves, on the second shelf, rotated 178 degrees exactly on a Tuesday. Other than that when they worked well they were spectacular, when they flaked you tore your hair out (probably why I am almost bald now!)
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I've worked a few places that had them and they have less than a stellar track record for reliability in my experience.
 
mwroobel said:
We ran a ton of ZFS Z2/Z3 with FusionIO SLOG's and they were great!!!! If you put them in a dark room, away from stray electromagnetic waves, on the second shelf, rotated 178 degrees exactly on a Tuesday. Other than that when they worked well they were spectacular, when they flaked you tore your hair out (probably why I am almost bald now!)
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Lol.

These days I have my SLOG's on a couple of mirrored Optanes, but since those are going the way of the dodo, wonder what the SLOG's of the future will be.
 
boot drives a lot of hte time- m2 boot, sas/nvme capacity. see: Dell BOSS cards
 
mwroobel said:
We ran a ton of ZFS Z2/Z3 with FusionIO SLOG's and they were great!!!! If you put them in a dark room, away from stray electromagnetic waves, on the second shelf, rotated 178 degrees exactly on a Tuesday. Other than that when they worked well they were spectacular, when they flaked you tore your hair out (probably why I am almost bald now!)
Click to expand...
lol
 
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