The 4 Mistakes of Buying SSDs for Businesses

Опубликовано 4 октября 2021, 17:00

SSDs are all alike, right? You plug it in and instantly have all of that Flash Memory available for your workload? Right? If you answered yes, then you’ve probably fallen to one of the 4 biggest mistakes you could make when selecting your SSD.

1. Enterprise-grade vs Consumer-grade
In all our years as a company, we at Kingston have talked to many customers, distributors and resellers and I have heard about a lot of mistakes when selecting an SSD. One of the common mistakes we see being made is the use of client SSDs in enterprise applications. While their price point may be attractive, client SSDs are not designed for server workloads. In the data center we need to test on server platforms, we need to test behind RAID controllers, and we need to test for I/O and performance consistency.

A consumer drive might work initially, but when you deploy several hundred of them and you realize they simply don’t work for long-burn enterprise applications. Also, client drives use exotic caching schemes – utilizing SLC. In short, you’re asking for trouble if you put that in a RAID configuration and throw big workloads at it. It might be good for a low-cost purchase, but it’s incredibly dangerous when you actually want to use it at an enterprise scale.
Enterprise drives are tailored for applications and when used outside that application, they run into more technical issues. And solving a client SSD issue that’s being used in an enterprise application is almost impossible to get most manufacturers to support.

2. Selecting the wrong endurance range or use intensity
Endurance is another big consideration when selecting an SSD for an enterprise application. Today, data centers have a choice when selecting the endurance range of an SSD which has direct effect on the cost of the SSD. Some environments are far more write or read-intensive. If your application does more reading vs. writing, like a video on-demand streaming service or database warehousing and you purchase a high write endurance, you’re paying for something that you simply don’t need. Similarly, choosing a read-intensive drive for a database logging or caching service wouldn’t be prime because of the write-intensive activities.

3. Testing with the wrong scripts and testing for fails
When evaluating drives, there are two ways of doing it: you either trust the specs on a data sheet from a manufacturer; or you put the drive through the paces using your exact setup and testing scripts.

If you’re just trusting the specs, you don’t always know how the drives were tested to achieve their peak or average performance numbers, or if it would match your working environment. Thus, we recommend testing SSDs to your specific benchmarks, before you make a large purchase.
So, what does a real rest look like? The best way to test an enterprise SSD is with an enterprise workload and then measure performance consistency and latency. Client drive test modes don’t go through any of those exercises at all, because most are only focused on performing well on a single processor and application. They want to know that the drive will perform well while playing Overwatch or Fortnight – not multi-core Machine Learning processes. Proper testing requires the right type of drive, in real-world conditions. Will it match the hardware? Will it provide the right performance consistently? If buying at scale, try it before you buy it.

4. Not buying SSDs from reputable brands
A major motion picture studio once bought drives online just because some executive found a cheap option. But you get what you pay for if you’re not buying through a reputable source for enterprise-grade products. If you’re buying on a consumer ecommerce retailer, you may be getting an off-brand, or the devices may not be exactly what you think they are.
Most channel resellers, or even the manufacturers themselves, have dedicated teams to help you find out what the best option is for your given application. At Kingston our enterprise SSDs go through a battery of platform compatibility testing as well as an extensive I/O consistency and latency profiling.

The reputation of who you’re buying from isn’t just limited to who makes it, but how it’s supported. If you can’t get the support for your workload and unique implementation, then perhaps it’s time to find a new solution. Kingston has solutions for all you SSD needs.
#Kingstoniswithyou