Comments on: Getting the Best Performance From an Intel DC P3700 Flash Storage Card

By: Glenn Berry

Glenn Berry — Thu, 17 Nov 2016 17:30:35 +0000

In reply to Rich H. Yes, they provide a lot of performance for a pretty small price!

By: Rich H

Rich H — Thu, 17 Nov 2016 17:22:44 +0000

This is exactly what we’ve done for our core SQL cluster nodes.
Server 2012 R2, MS Storage spaces Mirror with 2x 2TB DC P3600.
We get Seq32T1 read speeds ~4600MBps, and write speeds ~1700MBps.
4K Q32T1 Read 350MBps and Write 165MBps
Random 4k Read 31.7Mbps, Write 110MBps
We’re just about to expand and put in another pair.

Amazing performance boost for the price!

By: Glenn Berry

Glenn Berry — Tue, 03 Mar 2015 18:50:57 +0000

In reply to Rob. These two drives were in RAID 1 at the OS level, i.e. using RAID 1 in Windows, not with a hardware RAID controller. If you care about redundancy and system uptime, it is a good idea to use RAID 1 for these types of storage cards, to eliminate a single point of failure.

By: Rob

Rob — Tue, 03 Mar 2015 18:46:11 +0000

Glenn, helpful article ..can you please clarify when you say you were using 2 x P3700 were they independent to WS2012r2 or in RAID 1? [I see the “D” drive on one in your test]

..what are the considerations that we must apply in IT Architecture Design re need to RAID or can use independently? ..how do they present to the Operating System before config’d? after? any screen shots to share?

By: Glenn Berry

Glenn Berry — Mon, 15 Dec 2014 14:24:25 +0000

In reply to Wye. I'm not sure what your point is here. My point is that using the native Intel driver made a substantial difference in performance on this benchmark.

By: Wye

Wye — Sat, 13 Dec 2014 11:16:04 +0000

Very weak benchmark. This drives requires QD128 to shine, you are no longer on the SATA limit of 32.