Re: Do I have a hardware or a software problem? - Mailing list pgsql-performance

Intel makes the case that the S3700 is the ideal drive for entry, mainstream and performance enterprise computing including HPC use cases. The claim is bold, largely because of the decision to go with a SATA interface, which has several limitations in the enterprise. The SATA interface tops out at a queue depth 32 (SAS scales as high as 256 in most cases) which means that when requests go above that level average and peak latency spike as we saw in all of our workloads.

Another huge advantage of SAS is the ability to offer dual-port modes for high availability scenarios, where there are two controllers interfacing with the same drive at the same time. In the event one goes offline, the connection with the SSD is not lost, as it would with a standard SATA interface without additional hardware. Some SAS drives also offer wide-port configurations used to increase total bandwidth above a single-link connection. While the Intel SSD DC S3700 against other SATA competitors is very fast, the story changes when you introduce the latest MLC and SLC-based SAS SSDs, which can cope better with increased thread and queue levels.

We picked the primary post-preconditioning sections of our benchmarks after each SSD had reached steady-state. For the purposes of this section, we added the Intel SSD DC S3700 onto the throughput charts of the newest SAS high-performance SSDs. There are also significant latency differences at higher queue depths that play a significant factor, but for the sake of easy comparison we stick with raw I/O speed across varying thread and queue counts.

In a 100% 4K random write or random read scenario, the Intel SSD DC 3700 performs quite well up against the high-end SAS competition, with the second fastest 4K steady-state speed. When you switch focus to read throughput at a heavy 16T/16Q load it only offers 1/2 to 1/3 the performance of SSDs in this category.

http://www.storagereview.com/images/intel_ssd_dc_s3700_main_slc_4kwrite_throughput.png