Servers and SSD Performance
As IT professionals seek to overcome performance bottlenecks at the storage level in pursuit of faster boot times, application load times etc., many are turning to flash memory, otherwise known as solid state drives (SSD) to get higher performance out of their servers.
Solid state drives are generally considered to be faster, more powerful, more efficient and in some respects more reliable than hard drives.
High end SSDs have proven to yield some very impressive read times, well over double a typical SATA hard disk drive.
The problem is that solid state drives start out really fast and then quickly start losing their speed.
The misleading theory is that because there are no moving parts in an SSD, file fragmentation is not an issue. The truth is SSDs experience write speed degradation due to fragmented file write activity and free space fragmentation.
Keeping SSD Performance As Fast As New
When it comes to read performance, SSDs are by far faster than your standard hard drive. One of the main reasons for such fast read times is the lack of “seek time” that an SSD has to perform to find and retrieve a piece of data versus a hard drive. Simply put, a hard drive has to move a magnetic head connected to an arm over a track on a platter and then through various means to find the data requested and then read or write something.
On the other hand, an SSD sends an electrical pulse to read the data which is much faster in comparison. The lack of a moving part cuts the time down considerably.
SSD Write Performance
Writing data to an SSD is a whole other story. Small free spaces are scattered throughout an SSD volume at the logical level and cause the file system to write a file in fragments to those small free spaces. By doing so, write performance is degraded by as much as 80% to that solid-state storage device.
Furthermore, SSDs have a finite number of writes that they can perform over their lifetime. One of the downfalls of SSDs is that they require that old data be erased before new data is written over it, rather than just writing over the old information like with hard drives.
Due to the doubling effect of needing to read and erase before it can write again, SSDs undergo twice as much use. This doubles the wear and tear and can cause major issues, including shortened lifespan, and slower random write performance.
As the SSD approaches its limit, more fragmentation and write errors occur, causing the SSD to slow. Write performance decreases proportionately as free space fragmentation increases. All SSDs will suffer from this problem at one point or another unless DymaxIO® is used to optimize the solid-state drive.
DymaxIO’s IntelliWrite Technology Restores SSD Write Performance
IntelliWrite® is patented write optimization technology. It automatically prevents excessively small, fractured, random writes and reads that harm SSD performance. This enforces contiguous and sequential writes to occur which are much faster and efficient than fragmented or random writes. IntelliWrite in new DymaxIO fast data software ensures optimal SSD performance and prevents dreaded performance degradation.
Finding The Right Solution
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What People are Saying
What People are Saying
“Typically, IT professionals respond to application performance issues by reactively buying more hardware. Without the luxury of a padded budget, we needed to find a way to improve performance on the hardware infrastructure we already have. It saved us from having to make a heavy investment in SSDs or do a complete rip and replace of our entire hardware infrastructure. To this day, I still can’t believe software is doing this.”
R. Ortiz, IT Manager, ASL Marketing
“I have used Diskeeper since it was first introduced. It has always worked well in keeping my drive defragged for the fastest response times for all of my apps. Thank you again for this fine piece of software.”
Philip Baldwin, NVQB
“The Undelete software that we use on all our Regional Servers is undoubtedly worth every penny. It
has saved our Techs numerous hours in restoring files inadvertently deleted as opposed to having to
restore from backup tape.”
Michael Lucas, Gancom (Division of Gannet Fleming)
“Undelete saves backup restores when someone accidentally deletes a file from a Windows share. We store tapes off site so Undelete can save a big delay for file restores of that type. Undelete does what it says on the box – really – and it works nicely as a network recycle bin.”
Glenn Edwards, Infrastructure Analyst, Itron
“I have been using Diskeeper for many years, it is installed as a routine on all servers, networked clients, SHO and any other computer. It has never presented any problem and has always demonstrated improved drive performance in both servers and clients. With each new release Condusiv does not merely provide “window dressing”, they actually improve the product with the objective of making it easier to use, more reliable, more effective and easier to use.”
Mark Sills, Systems Administrator / Manager, Home User