Solidigm SSD D7-P5520 Evaluation: Large, Quick NVMe Cloud Storage

Earlier this 12 months, SK Hynix acquired Intel’s NAND flash enterprise and fashioned a brand new entity, dubbed Solidigm. For all intents and functions – thus far, no less than – Solidigm’s operation is a well-oiled machine and subsidiary that has taken Intel’s established and revered NAND flash enterprise and ran with it underneath a brand new identify. As such, the primary Solidigm product we’ll be displaying you right here at the moment, the SSD D7-P5510, could trigger a number of double-takes. As you’ll see, the bodily drives nonetheless carry Intel branding and keep on with the identical mannequin quantity scheme and design.

Rest assured, nevertheless, SK Hynix and Solidigm plan to take the stable state storage enterprise in their very own distinctive path. In the patron house, SK Hynix has among the higher SSDs at present obtainable. We count on the same depth and energy to permeate the enterprise and information middle storage enterprise, although this SSD we’re right here at the moment was already effectively into growth when the acquisition passed off.

With all that mentioned, let’s take an in depth have a look at the Solidigm SSD D7-P5520 in a few capacities, each 7.68TB and three.84TB. The specs for these drives (and better capability fashions within the line-up) differ barely, however enhance upon the earlier gen in a number of methods…

Solidigm SSD D7-P5520 Specifications & Features

The Solidigm SSD D7-P5520 collection drives we’ll be displaying you right here at the moment leverage the widespread U.2 2.5” x 15mm kind issue and can be provided in capacities from 1.92TB all the way in which on as much as a whopping 15.36TB. There are additionally E1.S 9.5MM and 15MM drives within the household, however their capacities high out at 7.68TB. As talked about, the specs fluctuate considerably between capacities and kind elements, however the Solidigm web site has a straightforward examine characteristic obtainable, must you be contemplating its varied kind elements.

At the core of those drives is a proprietary, native, PCIe Gen 4 NVMe controller paired to second-gen 144-layer TLC 3D NAND reminiscence and freshly-tuned and optimized firmware, to offer improved latency and throughput with extra constant QoS throughout a wide range of workloads. Moving to the latest144-layer 3D TLC NAND flash reminiscence on these drives not solely permits Solidigm to offer excessive capacities and enhance the utmost storage density per server, nevertheless it additionally minimizes energy consumption; peak energy underneath load is ~18 watts with the 7.68TB drive (15 for for the three.84TB mannequin). And each of those drives idle at roughly 5 watts.

Inside their aluminum chassis, which additionally act as heatsinks due to their built-in fins, these drives characteristic some DRAM (8GB within the case of the 7.68GB mannequin), along with the controller and NAND, and capacitors that allow full power-loss safety. Like previous-gen, information center-targeted SSDs from Intel, D7-P5520 drives provide end-to-end safety from silent information corruption and embrace 5-year warranties, with endurance scores of 1 full drive write per day (as much as 14 PBW for the 7.68TB drive). They help AES-256 bit encryption as effectively.

In phrases of throughput, the upper capability 7.68TB SSD D7-P5520 is rated for 7.1GB/s reads with 4.2GB/s writes. The 3.84TB drive clocks in at 6.7GB/s (reads) and three.7GB/s (writes) As you’ll see in only a bit, the drives are completely able to hitting and even exceeding these speeds, so Solidigm is being considerably conservative with their rated specs right out of the gate.

As you’d count on from a knowledge middle centered merchandise resembling this, Solidigm affords administration, update, and upkeep software program for the D7-P5520 collection, for each Windows and Linux. The Solidigm Storage Tool (for Windows) affords a contemporary GUI, with a number of diagnostic and upkeep instruments to preserve the SSDs performing optimally. This is definitely a common device that works with any Intel or Solidigm information middle SSD (Intel Optane requires the Intel MAS GUI), which provides customers the power carry out such operations as updating the firmware on the drive, safe erasing it or sending a TRIM command to the drive with the SSD Optimizer to clean-up cells which are not in use.

Solidigm SSD D7-P5520 Test Setup And Benchmarks

Under every take a look at situation, the SSDs examined right here have been put in as secondary volumes in our testbed, with a separate drive used for the OS and benchmark installations. Our testbed’s motherboard was up to date with the newest BIOS obtainable on the time of publication and drives have been left clean with out partitions for some assessments, whereas others required them to be partitioned and formatted. Windows firewall, computerized updates, and display savers have been all disabled earlier than testing and Windows Quiet Hours / Focus Assist was enabled to stop any potential interruptions.

In all take a look at runs, we rebooted the system, ensured all temp and prefetch information was purged, waited a number of minutes for drive exercise to settle and for the system to achieve an idle state earlier than invoking a take a look at. All of the drives featured right here have been examined with their very own NVMe drivers put in where doable / obtainable, however the default Microsoft NVMe driver was used when a proprietary driver was unavailable. Also be aware, that is solely the second PCIe Gen 4 information middle SSD we have gotten our arms on, so the bandwidth obtainable to the Solidigm SSD D7-P5520 is successfully double that of the PCIe Gen 3 drives we used for reference comparisons.

IOMETER Benchmarks

As we have famous in earlier stable state storage articles, although IOMeter is clearly a well-respected business normal benchmark too, we’re not enamored with it for testing SSDs. The truth of the matter is, although our outcomes with IOMeter scale, it’s debatable whether or not or not sure entry patterns, as they’re offered to and measured, truly present a legitimate instance of real-world efficiency. The entry patterns we examined could not mirror your explicit workload, for instance. That mentioned, we do suppose IOMeter is a dependable gauge for relative obtainable throughput, latency, and bandwidth with a given storage answer. In addition, there are particular higher-end workloads you possibly can place on a drive with IOMeter, that you could’t with most different storage benchmark instruments obtainable at present.

In the next tables, we’re displaying two units of entry patterns; a customized Workstation / Server sample, with a 128K switch measurement, consisting of 80% reads (20% writes) and 80% random (20% sequential) entry and a 4K entry sample with a 4K switch measurement, comprised of 67% reads (33% writes) and 100% random entry. Queue depths from 1 to 32 have been examined.

The Solidigm SSD D7-P5520 drive fall throughout the higher echelon on the decrease queue depths with each entry patterns, however because the load ramps up and the queue depth is elevated, the drives start to stretch their legs and end on the high of the charts.

The information offered right here is the common bandwidth throughout all queue depth, with the entry patterns we examined. As you possibly can see, the Solidigm SSD D7-P5520s barely path the earlier gen D7-P5510 drives, however they really exceed their rated efficiency barely. Versus the older PCIe Gen 3 drives, there isn’t any contest — the Solidigm SSD D7-P5520s blow them out of the water right here. 

The Solidigm SSD D7-P5520 drives offered-class main or extremely aggressive latency traits throughout the board. As was the case within the bandwidth assessments, because the queue depth will increase, the drives are in a position to draw back from the opposite drives, particularly with bigger transfers with some sequentials labored into the combo.

ATTO Disk Benchmarks: Bandwidth & IOs

ATTO is easy disk benchmark that measures switch speeds throughout a selected quantity size. It measures uncooked switch charges for each reads and writes and graphs them out in an simply interpreted chart. We selected .5KB by 64MB switch sizes and a queue depth of 4 over a complete max quantity size of 256MB. ATTO’s workloads are sequential in nature and measure bandwidth and IOs, relatively than response occasions, entry latency, and many others.

Apologies for swapping their positions in these charts (the capacities of the Solidigm drives are swapped right here, versus the IOMeter scores). Regardless, efficiency is as soon as once more superb, with the 7.68TB Solidigm SSD D7-P5520 main the pack with each reads and writes, with the bigger switch sizes.

Peak IOs throughout the varied switch sizes are additionally right within the combine with the entire drives we examined. Samsung’s drives are explicit sturdy right here, however nobody mannequin actually runs away from the remaining.

SiSoft SANDRA Physical Disk Test

Next we used SiSoft SANDRA, the the System ANalyzer, Diagnostic and Reporting Assistant for some fast assessments. Here, we used the Physical Disk take a look at suite and supply the outcomes from our comparability SSDs. The benchmarks have been run on clear drives that lacked any partitions. Read and write efficiency metrics are detailed under.

Once once more, we see the Solidigm SSD D7-P5520 drives main the pack. The 7.68TB drive put up the very best reads and writes general, and the three.84TB drive trailed solely the higher-capacity D7-P5510 within the write take a look at. Peak bandwidth, as anticipated, is considerably larger for the entire PCIe Gen 4 drives.

AS-SSD Compression Benchmark

Here we ran the Compression Benchmark built-into AS SSD, an SSD particular benchmark being developed by Alex Intelligent Software. This take a look at is attention-grabbing as a result of it makes use of a mixture of compressible and non-compressible information and outputs each Read and Write throughput throughout the drive. We solely graphed a small fraction of the info (1% compressible, 50% compressible, and 100% compressible), however the pattern is consultant of the benchmark’s full outcomes.