I also have a couple of 1TB Samsung 960 PRO M.2 NVMe cards in this machine, so I thought I would run a couple of quick CrystalDiskMark tests on the two drives. One thing to keep in mind is that CrystalDiskMark is not the best synthetic benchmark to use to show off the strengths of the Optane 900p.

Traditional NAND-based SSDs excel at very high queue depths that are not usually encountered outside of synthetic benchmarks (especially for random read performance). Optane 900p SSDs perform extremely well for random reads at low queue depths. This gives you outstanding responsiveness and performance where it is going to be most noticeable in daily usage.

You can see part of this effect in the bottom row of CDM test results for reads, where the Optane 900p is doing about 4.3X more 4K IOPS than the Samsung 960 PRO at a queue depth of 1. A better test for this will be Microsoft DiskSpd, which can also measure the latency during the test run.

Here are some of the primary advantages of the Intel Optane 900p compared to current NAND flash storage.

• High random read and write performance
• High performance at low queue depths
• High simultaneous read and write performance
• High read and write performance at small capacity points
• High performance maintained as the drive fills with data
• Higher endurance than current NAND technology

Figure 1: 1TB Samsung 960 PRO with Samsung NVMe driver

Figure 2: 480GB Intel Optane 900p with Intel NVMe driver

The post Initial CrystalDiskMark Results for Intel Optane 900p appeared first on Glenn Berry.

I ended up getting a 1TB Samsung 850 EVO SATA III SSD, for $329.99 at my local Micro Center. The 850 EVO line has been around for about a year now, and prices have come down quite a bit since they were introduced. It is pretty amazing to get double the size (and better performance) at less than half the price, compared to what was available back in 2012.

Before I cloned the existing drive, I ran CrystalDiskMark 5.0.2 on it with a 4GB test file. The results are shown in Figure 1.

Figure 1: 512GB OCZ Vertex 4 SATA III SSD Benchmark results

I used the free Samsung Data Migration software (which only works with Samsung SSDs as the cloning target) to clone the old OCZ drive to the new Samsung drive. I used an Apricorn SATA Wire 3.0 plugged into a front-panel USB 3.0 port to connect the new Samsung drive for the cloning process. I could have shut down the system, and plugged the new Samsung drive into a native SATA III port to get better copy performance, but I was too lazy to do that… As it was, I was seeing about 125MB/sec during the cloning copy process, which was fast enough. If you are cloning/upgrading a drive in a laptop, you pretty much have to use a USB port to do it.

After the cloning process was complete, I shut down the system and swapped the drives. Windows 7 booted up without any problems, although it wanted a reboot once it realized that the drive had been changed. I also noticed that Windows 7 had lost it’s recollection of ever checking for Windows and Microsoft Updates, but asking it to check for updates fixed that issue.

Next, I fired up the Samsung Magician 4.9 software, which informed me that the new Samsung 850 EVO needed a firmware update. Before I ran the firmware update, I ran CrystalDiskMark 5.0.2 with the same settings as the previous test. The results are shown in Figure 2.

Figure 2: 1TB Samsung 850 EVO SATA III SSD Benchmark results (before firmware update)

After the drive firmware update, Windows 7 booted up without any problems, although it wanted another reboot once it realized that the drive firmware had been updated. I ran CrystalDiskMark 5.0.2 once again with the same settings as the previous test. The results are shown in Figure 3.

Figure 3: 1TB Samsung 850 EVO SATA III SSD Benchmark results (after firmware update)

As you can see, the benchmark results improved after the firmware update. I have not found any release notes for the firmware update (and it is not even listed on their web page), but at least the latest version of Samsung Magician knew about it.

Figure 4: Samsung Magician 4.9

I have not enabled RAPID Mode on the drive yet, but I know from prior experience that it can have a nice positive effect on performance. It does make it harder to analyze your storage performance when SQL Server is running on your workstation though. All in all, a pretty easy, trouble-free installation.

The post Upgrading a SATA III SSD appeared first on Glenn Berry.

A few weeks ago, I built a new Intel Skylake desktop system that I am going to start using as my primary workstation in the near future. I have some details about this system as described in Building a Z170 Desktop System with a Core i7-6700K Skylake Processor. By design, this system has several different types of storage devices, so I can take advantage of the extra PCIe bandwidth in the latest Intel Z170 Express chipset, and do some comparative testing.

The latest addition to the storage family is a brand new 512GB Samsung 950 PRO M.2 PCIe NVMe card that just arrived from Amazon yesterday afternoon. As of now, here is the available storage in this system:

1. (2) 512GB Samsung 850 PRO SATA III SSDs in RAID 1 (using the chipset RAID controller)
2. (1) 512GB Samsung 950 PRO M.2 PCIe 3.0 NVMe card in an Ultra M.2 PCIe 3.0 x4 slot
3. (1) 400GB Intel 750 PCIe NVMe card in a PCIe 3.0 x16 slot
4. (1) 6TB Western Digital SATA III hard drive in a SATA III port

Since I have an NVidia GeForce GTX 960 video card in one of the PCI 3.0 x16 slots, both that slot and the PCI 3.0 x16 slot that the Intel 750 is using will go down to x8 (which means 8 lanes instead of 16 lanes). The Intel Z170 Express chipset supports 26 PCIe 3.0 lanes, so you need to think about what devices you are trying to use. This system has Windows 10 Professional installed, so it has native NVMe drivers available from Microsoft.

I did some quick and dirty I/O testing today with CrystalDiskMark 5.02. The two NVMe devices are both using the native Microsoft NVMe drivers from Windows 10. As you can see below, both the Samsung 950 PRO and the Intel 750 PCIe NVMe cards have tremendous sequential and random I/O performance!

Table 1: Sequential and Random Results (Queue Depth 32, 1 Thread)

Keep in mind that the two Samsung 850 PRO SSDs are using hardware RAID1, which seems to help their sequential read performance, and that the two NVMe devices are both using the native Microsoft NVMe drivers, which may be hurting their performance somewhat.

Figure 1: 512GB Samsung 950 Pro M.2 PCIe NVMe Results

Figure 2: 400GB Intel 750 PCIe NVMe Results

Figure 3: 512GB Samsung 850 Pro SATA 3 (RAID 1) Results

Figure 4: 6TB Western Digital Red Results

The post Some Quick Comparative CrystalDiskMark Results appeared first on Glenn Berry.

The use case from nvmexpress.org is that

“NVM Express is architected from the ground up for Non-Volatile Memory (NVM). NVM Express significantly improves both random and sequential performance by reducing latency, enabling high levels of parallelism, and streamlining the command set while providing support for security, end-to-end data protection, and other Client and Enterprise features users need. NVM Express provides a standards-based approach enabling broad ecosystem adoption and PCIe SSD interoperability.”

NVMe is being pushed as a modern replacement for the old Advanced Host Controller Interface (AHCI) that most flash storage devices are still using, and all indications are that NVMe will really start to become more popular and more affordable in 2015/2016.

Windows Server 2012 R2 and Windows 8.1 have a native NVMe driver that allows NVMe devices to be automatically recognized by Windows. This driver works, but does not offer the best performance. I wrote about my experiences with the native NVMe driver last October. Microsoft has also released a hotfix to Windows Server 2008 R2 and Windows 7 that gives native NVMe support to the operating system.

Anandtech has had similar results with several different NVMe devices. Their information (from Samsung) was that

“the performance difference was due to the Microsoft NVMe driver creating FUA (Force Unit Access) I/O write commands. These FUA commands bypass the DRAM cache on the SSD and directly write to the flash, increasing the response time and also lowering bandwidth. For the same access traces, this situation does not happen with the Microsoft AHCI driver.”

This sounds pretty similar to the difference between write-back and write-through caching for RAID controllers. If you have any NVMe storage devices, you should make absolutely sure that you are using the vendor supplied NVMe driver rather than the generic Microsoft NVMe driver. My fear is that it will be very common for many server administrators to simply install their NVMe device, start the server, and then think everything is ok, since Windows recognized the device and it seems to be working.

There are a lot of recent tests of new NVMe storage devices to whet your appetite for this technology. Here are some reviews and tests of client devices:

PCIe SSD Roundup – Samsung SM951 NVMe vs. AHCI, XP941, SSD 750 and More!

Intel SSD 750 Review

Intel 750 series SSD review: Storage so fast, only the highest-end PCs can keep up 

Intel SSD 750 Series NVMe PCI Express SSD Review

Intel 750 Series 1.2TB NVMe PCIe SSD Review

Here are  some reviews of server devices:

Intel SSD DC P3700 Review: The PCIe SSD Transition Begins with NVMe

Intel SSD DC P3700 800GB and 1.6TB Review: The Future of Storage

Intel SSD DC P3700 Review (800GB) – NVMe for Enterprise…and Enthusiasts?

Hopefully, Microsoft will improve the performance of their native NVMe driver in a future update for Windows Server 2012 R2 and Windows 8.1. I certainly hope the native NVMe driver performs better in Windows 10 and “Windows Server 2016”. I would love to see Microsoft’s Jose Barreto weigh in on this subject!

The post Beware of the Native Microsoft NVMe Driver! appeared first on Glenn Berry.

The Intel SSD DC S3710 Series is a 2.5” form factor and comes in 200GB, 400GB, 800GB, and 1.2TB capacities. The Intel SSD DC S3610 Series comes in both 2.5” and 1.8” form factors with the 2.5” coming in 200GB, 400GB, 480GB, 800GB, 1.2TB, and 1.6TB capacities and the 1.8” coming in 200GB, 400GB, and 800GB capacities. Both of the new SSD Series will use a high-endurance version of Intel’s 20nm MLC NAND, with a SATA interface and will have greater write performance compared to the previous models. The endurance rating for the DC S3710 is 10 drive writes per day for the length of the five-year warranty, while the DC S3610 is rated at 3 drive writes per day for five years.

Intel quotes these performance figures for the DC S3710 Series:

• Sustained sequential read/write
  • 200GB: Up to 550/300MB/s
  • 400GB: Up to 550/470MB/s
  • 800GB: Up to 550/460MB/s
  • 1.2TB: Up to 550/520MB/s
• Random 4k read/write
  • 200GB: Up to 85,000/43,000 IOPS
  • 400GB: Up to 85,000/43,000 IOPS
  • 800GB: Up to 85,000/39,000 IOPS
  • 1.2TB: Up to 85,000/45,000 IOPS

Intel also quotes these performance figures for the 2.5-inch version of the DC S3610 Series:

• Sustained sequential read/write
  • 200GB: Up to 550/230MB/s
  • 400GB: Up to 550/400MB/s
  • 480GB: Up to 550/440MB/s
  • 800GB: Up to 540/520MB/s
  • 1.2TB: Up to 500/500MB/s
  • 1.6TB: Up to 540/500MB/s
• Random 4k read/write
• 200GB: Up to 84,000/12,000 IOPS
• 400GB: Up to 84,000/25,000 IOPS
• 480GB: Up to 84,000/28,000 IOPS
• 800GB: Up to 84,000/28,000 IOPS
• 1.2TB: Up to 84,000/28,000 IOPS
• 1.6TB: Up to 84,000/27,000 IOPS

The S3710 Series has better write performance, and higher write endurance compared to the S3610 Series. As always, the larger capacity models typically have better performance than the lower capacity models from the same series. These drives are supposedly available now, although I have not found them listed for sale anywhere just yet. Here is the suggested retail pricing from Intel:

• 1.2TB  DC S3710            $1909.00
• 800GB DC S3710            $1249.00
• 400GB DC S3710            $  619.00
• 200GB DC S3710            $  309.00

• 1.6TB  DC S3610            $1719.00
• 1.2TB  DC S3610            $1289.00
• 800GB DC S3610            $  839.00
• 480GB DC S3610            $  509.00
• 400GB DC S3610            $  419.00
• 200GB DC S3610            $  200.00

These drives are a very attractive alternative to being price-gouged for internal flash-storage by your server vendor. I have had a number of customers use the older DC S3700 drives in new servers they have purchased, all with good results.

The post New Intel Data Center SSDs appeared first on Glenn Berry.