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Is SSD really worth it?
In what kind of web app does SSD make a difference thus you would suggest choosing it instead of regular HDD hosting?
The only thing that comes to mind is random-reads but when you for instance retrieve data from a database with an index isn't the data read (and stored) sequentially? In my simple non-scientific test counting 10 million rows from a database was slower on the SSD.
Share your thoughts. 
Comments
The truth: you only need it if you enjoy showing off
or if you're YouTube
SSD's are much faster. However, typically in hosted environments we are talking about a RAID-10 of spinners compared to a single SSD.
I use SSD drives exclusively for databases these days. Odds are something isn't optimized properly if the spinning drive is faster and is a 1 drive vs. 1 drive comparison.
Maybe I should try a comparison with concurrent connections?
It would be handy if you need stuff written and read from the disk faster. Such as databases and constant logging, updating. Etc.
Well @sandro, concurrent connections should be improved as the spinning drive decays under load.
Probably seeing caching on the machine you are testing in both examples and effect of queuing.
Have you ran plain old disk speed tests to compare both drives? Compares throughput to other numbers for those drives to make sure all is functioning properly.
SSD makes a lot of difference.
Whenever I install/compile some panel or stuff, it takes 3 times less on ssd scrolling much faster than i can read.
Also any busy database will benefit from SSD.
If you compare a single SSD with a 6+ raid of sas2 it might end up that the raid is faster depending on many factors, however, a ssd raid will beat the hell out of a similar SAS raid.
Even as cache only, a SSD improves a lot the iops burden on the raid and makes it behave much better even if it does so only for reads.
If you can deal with the lower space amounts, there is no reason not to go with SSD.
Looking at my current needs, this is why I never try an SSD.
Though, even SSD-cached VPS does have better performance than regular ones. My sites are writing hundreds, sometimes thousands mysql records everyday.
That should be no problem even for a floppy drive, when we have thousands of records/queries per minute it begins to be ugly.
As Nick_A pointed out, if space isn't an issue, SSDs are generally a no-brainer these days.
They eliminate most I/O bottle necks, have lower power usage, generate less heat and are arguably more reliable than spinning drives.
Some people argue the write-life issue, but that's basically a non-consideration for all but the most write intensive applications.
We've been using SSDs for database builds, HDDs for web servers for a few years now. We found with our current stack, most I/O was being driven by database queries (even with indexes). While we find a modicum of I/O driven through media uploads, it was nothing a RAID 10 setup couldn't handle. SSDs are certainly a great tool to have in the arsenal, but as has been pointed out, the lack of space could restrict growth.
Personally, I literally can't go back to HDDs, whether that's in servers or front-end computers.
I recently bought SSD for my laptop and I'm loving it.
1. I do some photo/video editing. They sure use a lot of disk resources and I can see great performance enhancement. Especially when I'm exporting them.
2. No more annoying spinning noise + less worries about my disk being broken (because I'm always carrying my laptop all around).
I'd thought I'd raise that if you are hosting data that is confidental, avoid SSDs.
SSDs generally don't have the capacity to be securely erased, and any non-securely erased data can easily be recovered by someone with a Live USB of Bactrack or theoretically, the next person who has it.
Err, I know you can write 0's and 1's over the platters with DBAN (just did it a couple weeks ago) or a similar program, but I'm sure I speak for almost everyone when I say the best solution to avoid confidential data recovery for both SSD's and HDD's is this:
Getting a good deal with a SSD, with 2 GB ram, debain / direct admin, using Xen, and 2x v4 IP's (and v6 IPs) from a well known and respected provider, at low end prices.... Is the only issue I see.... And it's only an issue because they sell out faster than I'm able to scoop them up. LoL
Yes, it is worth it.
Is to keep data encrypted all the time to avoid it even when you use the drive and someone steals it, especially on laptops and all.
Unless someone has access to the live machine and/or can take the memory out as soon as you shut it down, there wont be much to worry about.