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I was curious if anyone had either opinions or best practices regarding SSDs in work environments.
I have quite a few (maybe 40-50?) dual-socket Xeon HP workstations from ~ 2008 - think xw6600- and xw6800-type machines. All are pretty beefy with dual quad-core Xeons, FX4800-class GPUs and 4 to 16 GB of RAM, and are used for various applications - FEA, compiling, CAD, data-heavy analytics apps. The thing is, they're all running various Barracuda 7200.10 drives... mostly the 80GB or 250GB varieties... not exactly the fastest drives in the world.
Most are on Win XP x64 but I'm about to bump them all up to W7 SP1 as clean reinstalls, and I've been wondering, a SSD could easily add a couple of years of useful life to these things. Something like the 80GB Intel Gen 2 would be a great boost for something like this, and relatively inexpensive to boot.
So, outside of the cost, is there a downside or any mitigating factors I should know about? We've been imaging clients using Acronis - any issues continuing to do so? Or, if I already have an image prepped, can I dump it on the drive, boot, install the SSD tools and set the auto-trim schedule, then kick it back to the user? Any issues or experiences with Intel's warranty support? In an environment such as this, where stability/dependability and price are the primary criteria, is an Intel G2 a good bet?
I already have a few Intel G2s and C300s on user PCs, but they tend to be hand-selected users for whom we built up the OS manually. So far there haven't been any issues.
I have quite a few (maybe 40-50?) dual-socket Xeon HP workstations from ~ 2008 - think xw6600- and xw6800-type machines. All are pretty beefy with dual quad-core Xeons, FX4800-class GPUs and 4 to 16 GB of RAM, and are used for various applications - FEA, compiling, CAD, data-heavy analytics apps. The thing is, they're all running various Barracuda 7200.10 drives... mostly the 80GB or 250GB varieties... not exactly the fastest drives in the world.
Most are on Win XP x64 but I'm about to bump them all up to W7 SP1 as clean reinstalls, and I've been wondering, a SSD could easily add a couple of years of useful life to these things. Something like the 80GB Intel Gen 2 would be a great boost for something like this, and relatively inexpensive to boot.
So, outside of the cost, is there a downside or any mitigating factors I should know about? We've been imaging clients using Acronis - any issues continuing to do so? Or, if I already have an image prepped, can I dump it on the drive, boot, install the SSD tools and set the auto-trim schedule, then kick it back to the user? Any issues or experiences with Intel's warranty support? In an environment such as this, where stability/dependability and price are the primary criteria, is an Intel G2 a good bet?
I already have a few Intel G2s and C300s on user PCs, but they tend to be hand-selected users for whom we built up the OS manually. So far there haven't been any issues.