Reviews - Intel SSD DC S3700 Series (800GB)

[HEXUS]

Fast and consistent: isn't this how all SSDs should be?

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[aidanjt]

s/None to speak of/£1,732.56/

[directhex]

I am so ****ing excited about these things you have *no idea*

At least double the performance of the old server-grade 710's in every regard, 10x better in others? Enough capacity that I can look at SSD-only systems rather than SSD/rust combos? Hell yeah! Double the already world class endurance rating on the 710's? Incredible.

[aidanjt]

I am so ****ing excited about these things you have *no idea*

At least double the performance of the old server-grade 710's in every regard, 10x better in others? Enough capacity that I can look at SSD-only systems rather than SSD/rust combos? Hell yeah! Double the already world class endurance rating on the 710's? Incredible.

Yeah, it's a fantastic drive to be sure. But it better be a business expense, or start thinking about selling redundant organs.

[directhex]

s/None to speak of/£1,732.56/

Cheap!

No, really.

Let's take the Crucial M500 as an example drive here - 960 gig for £500.

It has a quoted endurance rating of 72TB before it'll start to lose your data. Let's say you put it in a VM host, with ten VMs in it. So that's 7.2TB of writes per VM, over 5 years (or 4GB per day). That's not very much at all - my desktop PC does more writes than that per day, on average. In a VM environment, you can easily wear out a drive like this in under 5 years - maybe under a year, if you're doing a lot (e.g. webkit build bots). What's cheaper, £500 five times, or £1700 once, in a 5 year period?

[crossy]

I think Intel have got this more or less right - the focus on consistency rather than headline performance figures gets a big thumbs up from me. Where it's not so rosy is in that price - although I guess that's the inevitable cost of an "enterprise" solution that this seems to be aimed at.

Now if someone could do one of these kinds of drives in a 256MB+ form factor for less than £200 then I'd be interested - I really could do with moving my Steam games folder to something a bit quicker, having been kind of spoiled by the (now ancient) Vertex 2E that I have as an OS drive.

Cheap! No, really. Let's take the Crucial M500 as an example drive here - 960 gig for £500. It has a quoted endurance rating of 72TB before it'll start to lose your data. Let's say you put it in a VM host, with ten VMs in it. So that's 7.2TB of writes per VM, over 5 years (or 4GB per day). That's not very much at all - my desktop PC does more writes than that per day, on average. In a VM environment, you can easily wear out a drive like this in under 5 years - maybe under a year, if you're doing a lot (e.g. webkit build bots). What's cheaper, £500 five times, or £1700 once, in a 5 year period?

I know what you're trying to get at, but the scenario you're painting still yells "business use" to me - can't see any normal home user needing to hammer 10 VM's at the same time (oh and 10 VM's = at least 16GB of memory as well). So I can't help thinking that a home user is going to be better off sticking with the "rotating rust" storage for the meantime - even RAID'd. So like aidanjt is saying - they're a great idea if you've got a business account to purchase them with, otherwise they're merely a "nice to have" or "lottery win present".

[directhex]

I know what you're trying to get at, but the scenario you're painting still yells "business use" to me

You know the "DC" in the product name stands for datacentre, right?

They're totally not even close to suitable for home users.

Whether home users ever get a drive with the S3700's consistency without its epic endurance (and price)? That's an interesting question for the future.

[Agent]

I know what you're trying to get at, but the scenario you're painting still yells "business use" to me.

That's exactly where it's aimed though. High end business and data centre use.

I can think of at least one server at work where this drive would be a total no brainer. In fact, I'm going to forward this review tomorrow and suggest them for consideration in the near future.

Given that a business will often drop several thousand pounds on a server alone, never-mind storage, this is a serious contender for the storage side of things.

My biggest worry is that Intel have been seriously lacking when it comes to validation and bugs over the last few years. I've lost a lot of faith in them. There have been some serious issues that just shouldn't have happened.

[crossy]

You know the "DC" in the product name stands for datacentre, right?

DC = Datacentre? Oh right, and here was me thinking it stood for "Distinctly Costly"... (lol)

They're totally not even close to suitable for home users. Whether home users ever get a drive with the S3700's consistency without its epic endurance (and price)? That's an interesting question for the future.

And you posit another interesting question - to whit - whether there is (or isn't) a market for a performance-consistent drive with longer endurance than the ones currently available. I remember when I bought my Vertex 2E seeing claims that it would only last for two years at normal use.

I definitely think that the continued focus on faster and faster IOPS is wrong-headed especially given that, as stated in the article, we're saturating the interface now. Also as capacities get larger then surely it's inevitable that these'll find their way into HTPC's and other home uses where the system is on approaching 24x7. In which case the DC's consistency and endurance would be highly desirable.

For my own part what I'd like is to be able to have some kind of unit that I could plug a couple of drives into to give me a 3TB low power and silent NAS. Even laptop drives make faint whirring and clicks that can be annoying if the NAS is in a bedroom or similar quiet space.

[cjs150]

Rotating rust has a few years to go. At lunchtime I need to pick up a 1TB 2.5" drive. Quick trip to maplin and less than £70 and I have it. Once SSDs come down to £100 for 1TB, then rotating rust becomes obselete

[Willzzz]

I rather suspect the DC stands for Direct Correspondence or similar. This would be referring to the 1:1 indirection table which is what allows the amazing performance and consistency.

[aceuk]

Once SSDs come down to £100 for 1TB, then rotating rust becomes obsolete

We'll probably have 5TB-10TB HDDs by then.

[Willzzz]

And?
What will you put on them?

[aceuk]

And?

The point is that even when we have cheap 1TB SSDs, there will still be a need for mechanical storage (even if it's not in your primary PC). All the PCs I have at home have SSDs in them. Everything else is stored on my 10TB NAS.

When 5TB HDDs are released, I'll probably pick up some cheap 4TB drives so that I can upgrade the NAS to 20TB.

What will you put on them?

The same stuff I put on them at the moment (videos, music, photos, documents, games, backups etc.).

[miniyazz]

We'll probably have 5TB-10TB HDDs by then.

We need better reliability by then
The chances of an unrecoverable bit error start becoming worryingly high over 5TB