SSD in a server?

A

AirPower4ever

Limp Gawd
Joined
Dec 20, 2009
Messages
131
Hello everyone

I got asked a question that I am not sure how to answer so I am asking all of you.

My friend owns his own business as a Chiropractor. He has 3 laptops which connect to a wireless router then via LAN to the server.

He has been over to my house and seen the migration I have done to all my computers from regular drives to SSD's.

So he asked me the other day, can one of those work in my server? I was not sure of the answer since all my experience has been in home environments. So how about it? SSD in a server? I have Crucial, Samsung, SanDisk, Corsair in my various systems. Crucial's are a bit slower, but they are reliable as all of you had mentioned. I really love the Crucial's. I already lost a Corsair one and had to reload everything.

But can a Crucial M4 handle what he is doing? Is there a company I should point him to do the hardware migration? Or are SSD's just a simple "image" his current drive to an SSD and he is up and running; something that I can help him with? I've done that before, but again, that was a Dell gaming laptop and that went fine without a hitch.

His server is not RAID'ed, it is an IBM, really small case. Has only 60 x 60 x 20mm fans, that's how small. I saw the board before, it look like some ATX board cut in half. He has a router 'N' speeds, then from the router to the server via LAN at 1Gb.

So looking for some guidance and what I can tell him. If this is something we can do or something a company can do.

Thanks
 
Yeah, I use SSD's in my server. What does he use his server for? There's a lot more details needed. An SSD might not be the only bottleneck his server may be having.
 
If he is backing up stuff through a wireless connection, then that would be a bottleneck.
I would check to see what speed it is using.
 
We don't have enough details but I will already say that yes, SSD is possible in his case. Only specific write heavy uses can rule out SSDs and I doubt his practice has so much to write.

Now it would be interesting to know if currently he has a good architecture, I would want at least a RAID1 and a good backup. Depending on what he has it can be easy to swap hard drives with SSDs.
 
Personally, for business I would not rely on consumer level SSDs. I would have no issue doing that on a home server because it's not critical and downtime does cost me anything.

Is this just a file server or are you doing digital x-rays? For just serving small to medium files, I don't really see the point of an SSD in terms of trading speed for reliability. Regardless of experiences a consumer SSD won't be as reliable as a mechanical hard drive (yet). I would see if that case would handle another drive an setup a RAID1 arrray and make sure the backup is up to nuff.
 
Also remember that your network will be a bottleneck if those images are being accessed by other workstations even for pin and platter drives.
 
Thanks for the replies and sorry for all the missing information. I am not sure of all the information about servers

I talked to him and he told me these points;

His server just serves the client information (i.e. telephone numbers, address, etc)
holds their billing
Schedule appointments
his own pictures of the human anatomy
No digital pictures or movies. But maybe in the near future

That's it in a shell and just as mentioned above, it does not sound like heavy intense writing. Only time is when they enter a new client information. Sounds to me that most of the time the software they use pulls the data they need like addresses, patient history file, but nothing like digital.

They are using ChiroTouch as their software.

Then for a back up he has a external backup of that data on the server via a USB. He said his issues are the laptops are slow at bringing up the data or at times not at all. That sounds like a wireless issues as mentioned

So did a remote session to take a peek
Router is a D-Link 615. It is set up for N.

But the laptops are stuck at 54Mbps so there is a bottleneck. The router can do 300Mbps wireless. I can cover that, I have some spare WNDA3100 v2's laying around and they run at 300Mbps. But the LAN ports look to be only 10/100.

The LAN on the server are Gb so that too is a bottle neck. We talked some more and he is just getting another router; Netgear 10/100/1000 and 300Mbps.

The little server has a Hitachi drive and according to the specs, sustained is 61.5MB/s so to me that's slow. Then again, my drives are around 120-140 and then SSD's just spoil me.

The laptop tops seem slower to me and when I did a remote in to those machines I launched programs like Firefox, Excel, Word, they do just seem to launch slower. Maybe SSD in the laptop tops?

I told him that we should first attack the connections first: router, LAN lines(not sure if he is using CAT5) and get the wireless adapters installed which I will do tonight. Then we should run that for a few days and see if those "slow downs" go away.

He told me he looked inside the computer, he only saw 2 SATA ports. He also told me most of the files are Adobe PDF's, of what I am not sure. But I can ask.

Sorry everyone, I am the middle man and I do not know much about servers. But I'll try my best. I think he has seen my SSD's in action and just wants the same; not thinking about if he really needs it and as you guys mentioned, it might be just the router with wireless and LAN.

Thanks for all the inputs, I look forward to more.
 
The wireless is going to be the limiting factor, expect average speeds of 7-9MB/s sustained from a 300 "N" connection.
 
for simple db pull, latency is your issue, not maximum bandwidth
for ssd, if he realy wants it: id go for any smg/intel aka non sandforce ssd for the most reasonable price
for backups: RAID1 is not a backup! Backup is wol'ed servers in other side of country with scheduled rsync to them! :D
if needed go for two usb/esata/whatever drives and sync stuff to em on weekly/monthly basis
 
Regardless of experiences a consumer SSD won't be as reliable as a mechanical hard drive (yet).
Click to expand...

Don't consumer SSD have 1/2 the failure rate of desktop class hard disk drives? Expected annual failure rates of 1/2% of a percent instead of 1%.
 
It sounds like he'd be dumping money into something where no improvement will be noticed.

Can it be done? Sure. Should it? I personally wouldn't, unless he's really itching to tinker with stuff.

I have a prod win 2012 iis/sql server with the windows files, sql data files and sql temp files all on separate ssd's... performs great.
 
Thanks everyone and sorry for being away. This damn flu got me, what a you know what.

So before I hit the bed, I ran over and gave him one of my Netgear adapters, install it and there was an improvement. I never got around to checking the LAN line from the router to the server, just feeling really bad by then.

However, a day ago I went to the website of this software, seems like his server is out dated. He has a Pentium 4 processor and the site states dual core or better. 4GB minimum, but 8GB preferred and Gb LAN preferred. Ha, they recommend RAID1 for backup. I agree with asgards.

I think he wants to spend, he told me he bought a new router with Gb ports and bought an SSD.

I know this thread started asking for an SSD, but it now appears to the software, his server is out dated. What would any of you recommend for a parts list? He only has 3 laptops. He may expand to get 2 more in the future. So what do you guys suggest for parts (he would be looking for something to last 5 years or more)

Mobo-
Processor-
RAM-
PSU-
Video Card- (he uses dual screens, but they are only 1280 x 1024 each, can use DVI)
Case- (he currently has a small and I mean small case. As mentioned the largest fan is a 60mm)

@T. Whatley - according to the software, it does sql.

Thanks again everyone
 
I am going to move this information about server parts to the correct forum. Thanks though for the information on the SSD's
 
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