SATA SSD recommendation for all-flash pool

[FrankH]

Hey TrueNAS fellow people,

I would like to start migrating my main TrueNAS server to all-flash in the very near future and wonder what recommendations there are regarding the SATA SSDs? That it should definitely not be consumer grade disks (more unreliable) is of course out of question.

Use case is as follows:
Storing all kind of data (documents, audio and video), nothing really stands out

• Possible pool layouts
  Striped mirror
  pro: resilvering is faster and less stressful for drives
  con: no more drive fail during resilver process, or
  
  RAIDz2
  pro: another drive can fail while resilvering
  con: more stressful for each disc while resilvering is in progress

All hosts are connected via 1 Gbit LAN, which is why the slightly lower performance in terms of read speed is irrelevant. I am primarily concerned with longevity as well as reliability.

The following disks are currently on the short list:

• Micron 5300 MAX - Mixed Use 1.92TB, SATA (MTFDDAK1T9TDT-1AW1ZABYY)
  Read: 540MB/s
  Write: 520MB/s
  IOPS 4K read: 95k
  IOPS 4K write: 70k
  Memory modules: 3D NAND TLC, Micron, 96 Layer (Generation 3)
  TBW: 17.52PB
  MTBF: 3 million hours
  Data protection functions: Power-Loss Protection
  
  
• Samsung OEM Datacenter SSD PM897 1.92TB, SATA (MZ7L31T9HBNA-00A07)
  Read: 560MB/s
  Write: 520MB/s
  IOPS 4K read: 97k
  IOPS 4K write: 60k
  Memory modules: 3D-NAND TLC, Samsung, 128 Layer (V-NAND v6)
  TBW: 10.512PB
  MTBF: 2 million hours
  Data protection functions: 256bit AES, TCG Opal 2.0, Power-Loss Protection
  
  
• Kingston DC500M Data Center Series Mixed-Use 1.92TB SSD (SEDC500M/1920G)
  Write: 520MB/s
  Read: 555MB/s
  IOPS 4K read: 98k
  IOPS 4K write: 75K
  Memory modules: 3D NAND TLC, Micron, 64 Layer (Generation 2)
  TBW: 4.555PB
  MTBF: 2 million hours
  Data protection functions: 256bit AES, Power-Loss Protection

The Micron SSD is a bit worse in terms of write performance, but scores in all other aspects, which is why Micron would currently be my first choice.

In terms of price, the difference is negligible. Any advice, comments, tips and/or suggestions are very welcome.

Have a nice week and thanks for taking time to read through my posting.

 

[FrankH]

Following I answer myself and share/justify my decision with the community:

My need for storage capacity is not that high, nor will it ever be in the long-term. Therefore, the 16 available drive bays are more than sufficient to serve my storage needs. The price of enterprise grade SSD storage will get lower over time, although still much more expensive than spinning rust, which will make upgrading (more/larger) disks more attractive.

So I will start with 4x Micron 5300 MAX - Mixed Use 1.92TB, SATA (MTFDDAK1T9TDT-1AW1ZABYY) in a striped mirror array. According to the data sheet, these seem to be the best choice and I have had good experiences with Micron flash drives so far.

I'm not too worried about data security, since the zpool(s) are backed up on and off-site every night.

 

[HoneyBadger]

The Micron is a fine choice, you're unlikely to require the heavy write endurance of the MAX series unless you really plan to hammer on them.

The 1Gbps network connection will be a bottleneck well before the speed of any of those SSDs will become an issue. With sufficient caching, it's likely this could be served via spinning disk - but if price isn't an issue then you'll always have superior results from flash.

 

[FrankH]

Thanks for your thoughts @HoneyBadger, you are absolutely right, I will never ever outperform the max read/write performance of any SSD as long as using 1Gbps LAN.

What I forgot to mention in the initial post is that I see my main TrueNAS server as an experiment in terms of noise/heat dissipation as well as keeping power consumption low.

Total cost isn't unimportant, but not the main concern.

For me reliability is the most important factor.

 

[Jessep]

For me reliability is the most important factor.

This can mean lots of different things.

Is this for business use?

• Is it a critical system?
  • What is your redundancy status?
  • Required SLA?
  • Cost per minute/hour of downtime?
    • Figuring this out determines budget

Backups protect against data loss, not downtime.

 

[FrankH]

This can mean lots of different things.

Is this for business use?

No, private environment.

• Is it a critical system?

More, or less. Need access to a lot files frequently.

• • What is your redundancy status?

In fact of a single server: striped mirrored zpools.

In general: local access to main and backup (ZFS replication) servers. As well as an off-site backup (ZFS replication) server.

• • Required SLA?

No, I don't need SLA.

• • Cost per minute/hour of downtime?
    • Figuring this out determines budget

Backups protect against data loss, not downtime.

Downtime of the main TrueNAS machine doesn't matter that much in regards of the served files (NAS part) because of the locally available backup machine (NAS only). Downtime in regards of the virtualization part is not so mission critical.