[Kevin OBrien]

The Micron RealSSD P320h is a half-height, half-length (HHHL) application accelerator that leverages SLC NAND and a PCIe Gen 2 x8 interface to drive quoted performance of 3.2 GB/s sequential read and up to 785,000 random write IOPS. The P320h architecture is a departure from many of the other recent application accelerators we've reviewed that generally RAID together several flash drives. The Micron offering is different, instead using RAIN (redundant array of independent NAND) with custom controller, which is similar to the approach taken by Fusion-io and Virident. This architecture lets Micron boast some heady speed and latency claims while offering a high-level of data security on the drive. In this review we test a pair of the 700GB cards and will see not only how quick they go on their own, but how the P320h scales in Windows Server 2012.


Micron RealSSD P320h Enterprise PCIe Review

[Axl]

Gentlemen, thank you for your excellent review. Wow! Now that is what an enterprise storage review should be. As a SR reader since the ~1998 inception, I think this might be the finest piece of work in the site's history. This article is extremely relevant to some pathways I'm currently exploring.

[Kevin OBrien]

Thanks for the great feedback! Our goal is to make each new review better than the last one, so hopefully you will enjoy a *lot* of our enterprise content going forward

[Romain]

Thanks for this review.
Could you tell us which file system you used for your tests on linux?

Romain

[Kevin OBrien]

In both Linux and Windows we test without a filesystem in place.

[Romain]

I understand that Iops are calcuted based on latency and reading or writing blocks. So bits are written or read on SSD by an OS, and the way to write or read is based on a FS, isn't it?
I guess windows write and reads data on ntfs during these tests.
Thanks again.

Romain

This post has been edited by Romain: 29 October 2012 - 07:22 PM

[geshel]

Romain, on 29 October 2012 - 07:19 PM, said:

I understand that Iops are calcuted based on latency and reading or writing blocks. So bits are written or read on SSD by an OS, and the way to write or read is based on a FS, isn't it?
I guess windows write and reads data on ntfs during these tests.
Thanks again.

Romain

You've got things a bit flipped-around: these tests were performed by reading and writing directly at a block-level to the drive. No filesystem was involved at all. There are no files, just un-named and un-indexed blocks of data.

Filesystems like NTFS sit "above" the block-level; they essentially manage those blocks and present a file-based interface.

[Beppe]

Hi,
is it possible to know if RealSSD P320h is compatible with HP Proliant DL380p Gen8 on board ?

Thanks in advance.

[Kevin OBrien]

Compatible in what way? If you install it as a PCIe device in one of the slots it will have no problem in the system. If you are referring to using it with the onboard RAID controller though, it doesnt work through a SATA or SAS interface.