HP Database Server - SSD or SAS drives

[Slicker]

I'm considering the purchase of a DL360e Gen8 for use as a Microsoft SQL Server database server. I can either go with HP's Mainstream Endurance Large Form Factor (e.g. 3.5") SSD or I can go with SAS or SATA drives. The database is relatively small (under 10GB) and the server will have anywhere from 16 to 32GB RAM so if should be able to cache a lot of the data. Either way, there would be 4 drives for a RAID 5 w/ spare configuration. That or since the SSDs would be fast enough, I could go with RAID 1 (mirror) with two drives and have two host spares. We tend to run our servers for 3-4 years in the production environment before buying new ones and migrating the older ones to the test or development environment where they run another 3-4 years.

When in use (September thru May, 10 hours per day on weekdays for the most part) the server averages 60KB/second with peaks to about 8MB/second once in a while.

What are your thoughts on using SSDs for database servers? Would it pay to have RAID 5 w/ one hot spare instead of RAID 1 with two hot spares just to split the I/Os across more SSD drives? The SSDs would probably be 200GB each and < 50GB is needed for the OS, apps, and database so there would be space available for the SSD to mark areas as not longer usable after too many writes. Or, should I save more money and just go with the SAS drives?

Thoughts? Opinions?

[Bok]

I would go SSD if there was going to be a ton of writes going on, unless the costs were similar. I'm not as familiar with SQL Server as I am with Oracle/DB2/Mysql but for read intensive db's you want to aim to cache most of it in memory anyway.

[Mumps]

I would also strongly recommend against HP branded SSD's. Hugely expensive, and far from stellar performance.

SSD's: Yes,
HP SSD's: No.

[cineon_lut]

I usually run ssds in database servers. The raid 1 is fine, if it's a hardware raid, not a software raid. My 2¢


Vic (mobile)

[Slicker]

It turns out HP will not warranty the Gen8 servers unless it has official HP parts installed. Mumps was correct. The HP drives were actually Intel SD S3500 drives but cost 4 times what they do if bought from NewEgg. I ended up going with RAID 1 w/ hot spare on the web server and RAID 6 w/ hot spare on the database server. When they fail, I'll just replace them with 3rd party drives if the server is out of warranty. I also disabled hyper threading since Microsoft has changed the max number of cores allowed with SQL Server 2014 Standard edition so it didn't pay to have 32 hyper thread cores when SQL would only use a max of 16. It is getting a good burn in on NFS: http://escatter11.fullerton.edu/nfs/show_host_detail.php?hostid=684582