Howdy, Stranger!

It looks like you're new here. If you want to get involved, click one of these buttons!


Nvmes or ssds?
New on LowEndTalk? Please Register and read our Community Rules.

All new Registrations are manually reviewed and approved, so a short delay after registration may occur before your account becomes active.

Nvmes or ssds?

HostUpHostUp Member, Host Rep
edited February 2019 in General

Hi. So I thought of buying a server and put it in a datacenter but I was wondering what is best. NVMes or SSDs? Do NVMes hold as long as regular SSDs etc? This will be used for shared hosting.

Comments

  • They're the same thing.
    What you refer as "SSDs" are really SSDs using SATA as their connection, while NVME is using PCI (which is faster and also more directly connected to the cpu as a protocol).

    Nvme driver are usually faster, but it's not always the case.

    Thanked by 2warih rm_
  • HostUpHostUp Member, Host Rep
    edited February 2019

    @edfox said:
    They're the same thing.
    What you refer as "SSDs" are really SSDs using SATA as their connection, while NVME is using PCI (which is faster and also more directly connected to the cpu as a protocol).

    Nvme driver are usually faster, but it's not always the case.

    I have an NVMe m.2 SSD on my computer and it is great :D. It is just that I do not see many servers using them even though they are quite cheap.

  • Many old servers are missing an M.2 slot, or SATA drives are easier to fit in them.
    Perhaps that's the reason.

  • HostUp said: NVMes or SSDs

    NVMe

  • jackbjackb Member, Host Rep

    @edfox said:
    Many old servers are missing an M.2 slot, or SATA drives are easier to fit in them.
    Perhaps that's the reason.

    M.2 also aren't hotswap, and even a lot of modern (e.g. a lot of supermicro boxes with E3 V6) don't support u.2 which you need for hotswap nvme.

    Thanked by 1uptime
  • @jackb said:

    @edfox said:
    Many old servers are missing an M.2 slot, or SATA drives are easier to fit in them.
    Perhaps that's the reason.

    M.2 also aren't hotswap, and even a lot of modern (e.g. a lot of supermicro boxes with E3 V6) don't support u.2 which you need for hotswap nvme.

    This is just the reason why I still prefer SSD for now (individual use tough). I will move to NVMe when the cluster is already HA enough to let one node down :wink:

  • @jackb said:

    @edfox said:
    Many old servers are missing an M.2 slot, or SATA drives are easier to fit in them.
    Perhaps that's the reason.

    M.2 also aren't hotswap, and even a lot of modern (e.g. a lot of supermicro boxes with E3 V6) don't support u.2 which you need for hotswap nvme.

    Seems like hotswap NVME could be soon tm

  • ChuckChuck Member
    edited February 2019

    Couldn't wait for kvm 2cpu4gbram100gbNVME at $10 year.

  • JanevskiJanevski Member
    edited February 2019

    hdd.

    edit:
    nvme on pcie via m.2.

    Thanked by 1eol
  • also dont forget that some m.2 drives use SATA instead of NVMe, some people get caught out by this.

    Thanked by 1Janevski
  • JanevskiJanevski Member
    edited February 2019

    @Adam1 said:
    also dont forget that some m.2 drives use SATA instead of NVMe, some people get caught out by this.

    Exactly!
    It's same as sata ssd in that situation.

  • NeoonNeoon Community Contributor, Veteran

    Well, if you running bloody database servers.
    You should choose at least SSD's over HDD's, since on LET, you never fucking know, but you can imagine how much VM's that host putting onto the machine.

    So you better get SSD, NVMe is the better option, if its avail prefer that.
    Some people may have a use case for NVMe but SSD is quite sufficient for the most use cases.

  • difference between a good nvme ssd and a sata ssd is like the difference between a good sata ssd and an hdd.

    I suppose a downside for server usage is the power draw is usually higher for nvme vs sata

  • You can run multiple nvme per server if your server supports pcie bifurcation (e.g. splitting x16 slot into four 4x slots)
    With something like this:

    https://www.supermicro.com/products/accessories/addon/AOC-SHG3-4M2P.cfm

    It's supported in many newer Gen supermicro motherboards (x10 and up)

    This is the cheap method, the expensive method is to get a nvme controller and nvme backplane.

  • Nothing better than a huge hard ... disk.

  • It really depends what you'd be using it for. SSDs are great for most occasions, including some pretty CPU/HD intensive tasks. If you're only looking to host a website or fire up some VMs, an NVMe drive would make no difference whatsoever. Surely the VMs will boot faster, but then your CPU and Ram might hold the storage off. Investment to speed ratio is currently not good enough to fully replace the SSDs.

  • jsgjsg Member, Resident Benchmarker

    There's a lot of buts.

    Theoretically NVMe is much faster - but it needs PCIe lanes which brings spatial restrictions; but not always, but if they do not (e.g. U2) they are (still) rare and "enterprise", read expensive. Plus, of course, the number of available PCIe lanes is limited. Also NVMe, except the (expensive, of course) top ones, tend to waste those lanes.
    SSDs could be much faster (SATA 3.2, up to almost 2 GB/s) - but few controllers support it; most are 3.0 or if you are lucky 3.1 which are stil limited to 600MB/s.
    On the other hand SATA-3 has practical advantages; it offers spatial freedom and (usually) hot plugability both of which are very desirable in servers, particulary in a DC.

    But the list of buts goes on ... Examples:
    NVMe devices may often not be capable to sustain high speed due to cooling problems related to the standard itself (cooling provisions are usually absent and poor), and spatial factors (on the MB, low placement, bad air circulation). Replacement means a shutdown and expensive hands/maintenance.

    In summary, it will often be attractive - even in "classical" NVMe use cases - to go with a combination of SSDs plus more RAM.

    Personally, as a VPS customer, I prefer SSDs over NVMe for practical reasons, mainly reliability and price. Another reason is that according to my experience most usage profiles on typical servers do not really profit a lot from NVMes. Typically, adding some RAM benefits most common profies far more than NVMe. Note that this is similarly true for SSD vs spindles.

    On my desktop though I do notice significant advantages of NVMe over SSDs. But there the use profie is drastically different from a server.

    Thanked by 1uptime
  • @jsg said:
    There's a lot of butts.

  • @eol said:

    @jsg said:
    There's a lot of butts.

    where?!

  • @cybertech said:

    @eol said:

    @jsg said:
    There's a lot of butts.

    where?!

    NVM(e).

Sign In or Register to comment.