OCZ Technology 128GB Vertex 4 Series SATA 6.0 GB/s 2.5-Inch Solid State Drive (SSD)
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I just picked up an OCZ Technology 128GB Vertex 4 Solid State Drive (SSD) to drop in one of my machines at home. It doesn't need much space, so 128Gb size should be more than enough.
The main reason for picking this up is the speed. The box that this is going in currently hosts several VMs and the storage is on a NAS. After installing this, some of that storage will be offloaded onto the SSD, which should make for some speedier response times than a 1Gb Ethernet connection to some spinning disks.
After the Install
Installation was a breeze, it couldn't be simpler to install a SATA connection. Simply plug in the sata cable and the power cable and you are done. (Begin Rant) For those of you who recall installing IDE hard drives with primary master and slave configurations, and those terrible Molex connectors that would get stuck when you'd try to pull them out, then when they'd finally break free you'd slam your hand into the razor sharp casing and bleed all over your workbench... (End Rant) Yes, the SATA configuration couldn't be easier.
The system I installed it in is a VMWare ESXi server, which detected the local storage automatically. I added the new storage in VSphere inventory and it shows up just like the iSCSI and NFS mounts. I setup the system to use the SSD as swap and also copied one of my highest utilized Linux VMs to the SSD to run it locally. The speed in which the VM launches now is staggering in comparison to before (easily less than half the time to load). Anything that involves disk i/o in the VM is significantly faster than before. Though, this likely would have been true with a spinning disk as well, the SSD is perfectly silent in an already near silent server.
Summary
Overall, this disk is a pretty good deal. It is silent and pretty fast. The down side the lack of size, though they do offer larger sizes, the price goes up considerably. I'm sure in the not to distant future there will be cheap terabyte SSD options, but in the mean time this will do nicely.
Comments
Vertex 3 had lots of problems
Vertex 3 had lots of problems due to BSOD, let us know if Vertex 4 has any. Thanks
So far, so good. I'll
So far, so good. I'll definitely post an update if it crashes. But for now all is well and I'm happy with it.
note regarding the SSD
you will not get quicker response times for the VM, just for anything that's on that drive, if you want better response for the VM's i would suggest upgrading there storage also, as there speed is determined by (communication medium (Ethernet)vs processor of the NAS vs processor of the PC vs drive performance (RPM, controller channel)
i have where i use a dedicated as NAS/SAS with custom bispoke software to host, PC with 5x 500gb SSD's with I7 CPU. another way of increasing speed would possibly be using the PCI-E channel, but that depends on the speed of your available channels vs the speed of the SATA channels
Faster with SSD
The VM was completely moved to the SSD, and as expected the response times have greatly improved. The OS loads in a fraction of the time it did when hosted on the NFS mount. The application is also at least twice as fast, though I have no specific metrics as I didn't time it before installing the drive.
The SSD was definitely worth the price of admission in this case.
indeed! ^^
Awesome, im glade your happy with it, OCZ are very good drives and robust! however there dropping in price once again soon with the next gen or hardware coming in the spring, fingers crossed for 256gb (250gn) at the prices we are looking at the 128 (120) GB now.
BSOD is not the problem, its a reporting process for problems^^
stick the BSOD message here then, as if its what i think it is, its a driver issue, this was solved along time ago! please read the BSOD error or provide a hardware dump if you do get problems.
i just ordered this one :]
i just ordered this one :]