M6600 Pre-purchase Questions

Agreed. Spending lots of time to get it the transition right is cheaper.

The Renice/Dell SSD mSATA X3 120GB sounds interesting. Due to it's small size, I'd reserve it for OS only. There are two issues with that with regard to the M6600.
1. The mSATA SSD is limited to SATA II bandwidth. The SATA III ports are on the drive bays.
2. The M6600 tries real hard to put the OS on the drive bay drives. M6600 SSD w/ Dual HDD RAID array - Enterprise Client - Forum - Enterprise Client - Dell Community

I use the Intel X25 SLCs on our UNIX servers. People say, "Oh, they're so expensive." That's only if they do the math comparing a RAID-10 of SLCs to a RAID-10 of platters. When you compare a RAID-0 of SLCs to RAID-10 of platters, it's a whole different cost structure, especially if the CPU is not the problem. With ~700 X25s running in the data center and zero failures in almost 4 years, nobody with X25s should be thinking RAID-1, 5, or 10. You're a lot more likely to have a power supply or motherboard failure, and that's where VMware comes in. Compare that to maintaining 1 spare for every 10 15K drives in the mechanical arrays. The only reason there is a discussion at all about SLCs wearing out is because they have no mechanical parts. So the logical question is, then how long do they last, and the answer is not forever, but close enough. The question of how many times a platter can be written doesn't make sense to ask because a mechanical drive will fail before it ever gets there. NO mechanical drive has a prayer of outlasting an SLC. The biggest problem with SLC is density. You can pack a lot more in a small area with MLC than SLC. The OEMs came up with spec that would require MLC suppliers to have a drive that would go at least 5 years of hard use. Intel doubled it. You can buy that technology today in the Intel/Micron 256GB drives that Dell sells. The Renice/Dell SSD mSATA X3 I know nothing about. I was originally thinking the Micron 256GB plus a 750. Maybe I'll think a little more about the mSATA 120GB and two 750s. That would give me a lot more room to do P2V of customer servers. I don't trust MLC to the same level as SLC, and two years ago, I wouldn't even think about using it. But it's almost 2012, and if Intel is comfortable with it, that's quite an endorsement in my book. The Renice/Dell SSD I don't know, but I MIGHT give it a shot.

Thanks!

 

Is the 128GB mSATA SSD in the Dell Precision m6600 an SLC or MLC?

 

It's an MLC.

 

I was hoping it would be an SLC so that is very disappointing to hear. I was planning on purchasing either the m4600 or m6600 to last at least 5 years without any hardware failure so I may have to rethink my plans.

 

There is no way it could be SLC. Bear in mind X25s 64GB drives we have been running are STILL the largest SLCs in the 2.5" form factor, which is a far larger form factor than mSATA/1.8".

When it comes to SLCs, Intel has no equal. One reason may be because it was apparent to all that density was going to be the problem. Intel wasn't the earliest in the MLC game because they have never had much interest in shaky technology nor have their customers, the OEMs. Micron and Intel put together a joint venture for MLCs. AnandTech - Intel X25-M SSD: Intel Delivers One of the World's Fastest Drives Be careful with the following article. Intel 310 VS Renice mSATA SSD - ssd - Storage. The Sandforce controller is what most drives use, but there is a reason why Intel and Samsung make their own. Sandforce did its share giving MLC a bad name. I'd guess they are past most of that because Dell couldn't afford to warranty them. An MLC drive electronics are complicated compared to SLCs. Intel and Samsung made their own controllers. I don't personally care for Samsung's design choices with regard to garbage collection and it's not that fast, and they talk about the future using the present tense. Intel isn't fast, but it's rock solid. (As usual)

We don't care if something takes a 100th of a second or a 10th of a second to load. We do care if something takes a 10th of a second or 10 seconds. An SSD that's reliable will keep us happy in user-land. Even on a poorly set up machine, at least 86% of reads come from ram cache. The biggest user-land irritation is poor WRITE performance. If you have big PST files, you know what I know what taking in e-mails does to 7200 rpm mechanical drive. That's why plugging in flash drives into USB 3.0 slots with Ready Boost or using a hybrid drive works well for learning files needed for boots and MAYBE a commonly used app or two. However, a 7200 rpm drive's write performance will slaughter a USB flash drive, which is one of the reasons neither are used for writes. That's why you'd pay money for an SSD. Only an SSD can help when using hibernation, which is what I use when leaving the office and going to a customer. On my laptop, boots usually happen in the middle of the night after a Microsoft update.

 

As far as I know, there are different levels of flash chips. I was told by one intel engineer, who works in the SSD division that the typical cheap USB/SD drive/card may have a write cycle of mere 3-5000. However, for enterprise level SSD, the write cycle is in the millions, not thousands. He said you get what you paid for when I complained to him about how old USB drive has failed and SD card in camera has failed before. I thought those flash devices last a long time. I was simply concerned if you are running all of those VM at the same time, not to mention compiling code, etc. that a cheap SSD with lower write cycle may not last a long time. Intel and some other firms do give 5 year warranty so as long as they stand by that, it could be an indication they're using higher quality flash = more write cycle life.

If you get an SSD with 5 year warranty from the manufacturer, it's likely it'll last that long for a typical user. I'm just concerned as the OP may not be a "typical" user, with code compilation and multiple VM running at the same time, he's much more likely to execute a lot of write cycles to his SSD, depending on how he set it up (if he sets up his VM on mechanical drive, then that's not an issue as much). If you are that concerned and you don't need a lot of space, Intel does offer a 20GB SLC mSATA drive. Otherwise, choose 34nm MLC drives with 5 year warranty is also likely to last a long time.

 

For me, that drive is too small as I will be using it primarily as a boot drive. I will be putting Windows 7 Pro, Visual Studio 2010 Pro and SQL Server 2008 R2 on to it. I think 128GB is more than enough for this.

 

I would. That's the only place they would fit anyway. I'd use the SSD for a system drive only, and move My Documents. A 120 gig SSD would get eaten up over time. Example: MS wants 1.5 gigs to install for XP. It actually it doesn't require anywhere near that. Today, with all of the archived patches since 2006, and no temp, the XP Windows directory is 15 gigs. MS will not install Windows 7 without at least 20 gigs free. Windows 7 takes less than half that. However, WinSXS will surely fill up the drive over time. If you don't understand WinSXS see WinSxS Folder in Windows 7 explained | WinVistaClub MS tells Dell how big to make the partitions on servers, and we both look like fools...twice. The new servers came with larger partitions, but they again are too small. We have technician licenses for tools to expand the system volumes. The WinSXS idea is actually amazing, but even the pointer files of only a few bytes reserve the size of the entire dll. So right out of the box, you're already twice size plus. I don't know if it says so in the referenced article, but you can get it down, but there is risk associated with that too.

 

My Vostro has Windows XP and it's also a bloated directory. I had all those patches + different .net versions installed by various application + updates. Clean up without breaking anything is easier said than done. I tend to not delete any "shared files" when I uninstall something because if something breaks, I may not even know about it until I try to use it in the future.

It's amazing how many applications you may install over the course of years. I wonder how many users are like us, who prefer to use their system for several years, if possible, as migrating is such a pain every single time on a Windows platform.

 

Personally I reinstall at least once a year. I typically make an image once I have it how I like, then reimage when I feel it is warranted. I still have to run updates and upgrade select applications, but in general it makes it much easier and faster.