M.2 SSD System volume recommendations

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tribunal3117
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M.2 SSD System volume recommendations

Post by tribunal3117 »

I'm looking at getting a QNAP TVS-h874. My plan is to get 2x1TB M.2 SSDs for the system volume and put them in RAID1. I was also going to use that volume for ~500GB of iSCSI backend for my vmware ESXi box. The rest of
the storage on the NAS would go to 8 traditional HDDs in RAID6.

I already have the HDDs, but for the SSDs I had been looking at the Seagate Iron Wolf 525. However I was reading reviews, and these apparently run pretty hot. Since just about all reads and writes to the NAS will be from external systems (I won't be running anything locally except a CrashPlan Pro docker image), speed is likely to be limited by my network which is 1gbps. Assuming that, are there better PCIE3/4 options I should be looking at? What do folks recommend?
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dolbyman
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Re: M.2 SSD System volume recommendations

Post by dolbyman »

I use 2x 1TB WD BLACK SN750 SE in my 1288X for the system pool and they stay very nice and cool

They have a good price point and good endurance, very happy with those

https://www.westerndigital.com/en-in/pr ... DS100T1B0E
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howarmat
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Re: M.2 SSD System volume recommendations

Post by howarmat »

I use the Black as well in my h874 and they work well. Any brand will work really
tribunal3117
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Re: M.2 SSD System volume recommendations

Post by tribunal3117 »

dolbyman wrote: Tue Feb 07, 2023 12:33 am I use 2x 1TB WD BLACK SN750 SE in my 1288X for the system pool and they stay very nice and cool

They have a good price point and good endurance, very happy with those

https://www.westerndigital.com/en-in/pr ... DS100T1B0E
Dig it. I was planning to put my order in today, so just waiting on feedback here.
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jaysona
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Re: M.2 SSD System volume recommendations

Post by jaysona »

Keep in mind the "SE" has no DRAM cache and relies on using host ram (HMB) instead for keeping track of cell usage, cell management etc.

DRAM-less SSD are find for storage which are predominantly use for reads and where large sustained writes are not common.

System boot drives are better to have DRAM cache, in additional any volume that will be hosting active VMs will benefit from DRAM SSD vs DRAM-less SSD.

The following list is continually updated as SSD manufacturers continue with their bait 'n switch tactics:

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/ ... uuQva2gT4/
RAID is not a Back-up!

H/W: QNAP TVS-871 (i7-4790. 16GB) (Plex server) / TVS-EC1080 (32Gig ECC) - VM host & seedbox
H/W: Asustor AS6604T (8GB) / Asustor AS7010T (16GB) (media storage)
H/W: TS-219 Pro / TS-509 Pro
O/S: Slackware 14.2 / MS Windows 7-64 (x5)
Router1: Asus RT-AC86U - Asuswrt-Merlin - 386.7_2
Router2: Asus RT-AC68U - Asuswrt-Merlin - 386.7_2
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Router4: Asus RT-AC66U - FreshTomato v2021.10.15

Misc: Popcorn Hour A-110/WN-100, Pinnacle Show Center 250HD, Roku SoundBridge Radio (all retired)
Ditched QNAP units: TS-269 Pro / TS-253 Pro (8GB) / TS-509 Pro / TS-569 Pro / TS-853 Pro (8GB)
TS-670 Pro x2 (i7-3770s 16GB) / TS-870 Pro (i7-3770 16GB) / TVS-871 (i7-4790s 16GB)
tribunal3117
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Re: M.2 SSD System volume recommendations

Post by tribunal3117 »

Good to know. I didn't realize that about the SE, but fortunately I won't be running any VMs on this NAS. VMs on an ESXi box will however be using an iSCSI lun on the SSD volume though, but I can't imagine loads will ever become an issue.
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dolbyman
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Re: M.2 SSD System volume recommendations

Post by dolbyman »

My VM's on the 1288X run from SATA SSD's (4 of them in a RAIDz pool) haven't had any performance issues
jaysona wrote: Tue Feb 07, 2023 6:43 am System boot drives are better to have DRAM cache, in additional any volume that will be hosting active VMs will benefit from DRAM SSD vs DRAM-less SSD.
Wouldn't system boot drives have predominantly reads on them ? (I agree for use in write heavy applications) but system drives should be mostly read.

You can tell that the NVMe do not get a lot of writes as after almost a year, I still have 98% Lifetime remaining
1288X_SN750.JPG
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jaysona
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Re: M.2 SSD System volume recommendations

Post by jaysona »

Boot drives have a lot of small writes to them performed by the OS, this is one of the reasons why DRAM cache for boot drives is important, the other reason to have DRAM for SSD is that a power outage can kill a DRAM-less SSD.

DRAM on the SSD is used to (among other things) keep the state of the tables and address pages, capacitor on the SSD provide enough power to write the state cached in DRAM to the NAND flash. This is not the case with HMB based SSD which means a sudden power loss can result in the address page and table states not being written to NAND and the SSD being dead upon power up.

2% in one year is a lot, the 970 EVO in my plex server still has 100% after 15 months and I have Tautulli running on the same server, database optimization is performed weekly, bundles are cleaned up weekly and I have a dozen people watching on average each day - that's a lot of plex database writes. I can't even begin to imagine what type of write are being performed to your SSD. :-0

Image
Last edited by jaysona on Tue Feb 07, 2023 9:20 am, edited 2 times in total.
RAID is not a Back-up!

H/W: QNAP TVS-871 (i7-4790. 16GB) (Plex server) / TVS-EC1080 (32Gig ECC) - VM host & seedbox
H/W: Asustor AS6604T (8GB) / Asustor AS7010T (16GB) (media storage)
H/W: TS-219 Pro / TS-509 Pro
O/S: Slackware 14.2 / MS Windows 7-64 (x5)
Router1: Asus RT-AC86U - Asuswrt-Merlin - 386.7_2
Router2: Asus RT-AC68U - Asuswrt-Merlin - 386.7_2
Router3: Linksys WRT1900AC - DD-WRT v3.0-r46816 std
Router4: Asus RT-AC66U - FreshTomato v2021.10.15

Misc: Popcorn Hour A-110/WN-100, Pinnacle Show Center 250HD, Roku SoundBridge Radio (all retired)
Ditched QNAP units: TS-269 Pro / TS-253 Pro (8GB) / TS-509 Pro / TS-569 Pro / TS-853 Pro (8GB)
TS-670 Pro x2 (i7-3770s 16GB) / TS-870 Pro (i7-3770 16GB) / TVS-871 (i7-4790s 16GB)
tribunal3117
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Re: M.2 SSD System volume recommendations

Post by tribunal3117 »

My battery backup is good for 1 hour, longer than any outage I've had since I moved to my suburb 13 years ago. That's a valid concern, but I'm covered there.
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dolbyman
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Re: M.2 SSD System volume recommendations

Post by dolbyman »

hmm I will check the writes on that drive then*..is your Plex server also a QNAP (we know that QNAP is sometimes "less than optimal in their need for writes"...as in md9 and md13 on all drives even on QuTS)

* also endurance difference between SN750 SE and 970 EVO (*edit* both have apparently 600TBW on the 1TB model...meaning my drives have 12TBW written to them in 1 year)

Not crazy worried about sudden powerloss due to UPS and of course multiple backups..but will keep the issue in mind when asked about advice in the future
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jaysona
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Re: M.2 SSD System volume recommendations

Post by jaysona »

My plex server is (currently) a TVS-871, the Celeron J4125 was starting to cripple under load after 15-ish simultaneous streams, since all my remote users use direct play and direct stream, the Quicksync capabilities of the J4125 became less important than being able to handle the multiple simultaneous streams.

For comparison, this is the size and number of files and directories of .qpkg/PlexMediaServer directory on my TVS-871.

Image


Even with a UPS, sometimes and inverter will fail or a older battery will fail. I have six UPS' and in the past five years, two (Cyberpower 1500PFCLCD) have failed me completely, although I suspect that the reason for the UPS failure is more due to Hydroquebekistan not being able to keep power on for more than two weeks at time and the constant cycling finally killed the inverter which subsequently killed the battery.
RAID is not a Back-up!

H/W: QNAP TVS-871 (i7-4790. 16GB) (Plex server) / TVS-EC1080 (32Gig ECC) - VM host & seedbox
H/W: Asustor AS6604T (8GB) / Asustor AS7010T (16GB) (media storage)
H/W: TS-219 Pro / TS-509 Pro
O/S: Slackware 14.2 / MS Windows 7-64 (x5)
Router1: Asus RT-AC86U - Asuswrt-Merlin - 386.7_2
Router2: Asus RT-AC68U - Asuswrt-Merlin - 386.7_2
Router3: Linksys WRT1900AC - DD-WRT v3.0-r46816 std
Router4: Asus RT-AC66U - FreshTomato v2021.10.15

Misc: Popcorn Hour A-110/WN-100, Pinnacle Show Center 250HD, Roku SoundBridge Radio (all retired)
Ditched QNAP units: TS-269 Pro / TS-253 Pro (8GB) / TS-509 Pro / TS-569 Pro / TS-853 Pro (8GB)
TS-670 Pro x2 (i7-3770s 16GB) / TS-870 Pro (i7-3770 16GB) / TVS-871 (i7-4790s 16GB)
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