Linode SSD (beta)
caker
Linode Staff
SSDs are expensive, and the good SSDs are really, really expensive. Although the cheaper SSDs exist, they wear out more quickly, potentially slowing down as they wear, and have slower overall throughput. Not a good combination for use in multi-tenant server workloads. We only want to use the good stuff.
We've developed a new Linode storage layer that includes a combination of 'good stuff' SSDs (in redundant pairs) and our proven hard drive storage system. Random IO is processed first through the SSDs (the thing that they are really good at) while sequential IO short-cuts to the hard drives - which is pretty slick. Our new storage layer gets us the best of both worlds: the speed of SSDs but with the durability, capacity, and confidence of traditional hard drives.
Our storage was pretty fast already, but this new storage layer is incredibly fast! The following benchmarks were executed on a Linode 1024, on idle hosts, using tiobench with a 2GB file size setting, and up to 8 threads. Pretty much the worst-case scenario (threaded IO).
Sequential Random
Storage System Reads Writes Reads Writes
----------------- ------- ------- ------- -------
Current 149.34 133.90 4.34 5.48
New 853.93 612.46 108.43 135.02
Results are in MB/sec. The SSDs' contribution to throughput is clearly evident, in some cases showing 2400% improvement! But, we can only do so much with synthetic benchmarks - so we need your help testing under real-world workloads.
Tell me about the beta
* It's only in Newark right now
We'll move one of your existing Linodes to one of these special hosts
There are limited slots available
This is experimental
You might lose all of your data
Participate at your own risk
You really should have backups
Expect the unexpected
This may cut you
Chicks dig scars
What do I do as a beta participant?
First, please do make sure you have backups of your system. There are no guarantees how stable this thing will be. Secondly, you don't need to do anything special. We want to get a good sense of how this will perform under real-world workloads. Thirdly, if you want, feel free to perform some benchmarking on your own, and share your experiences here.
Is the beta currently open?
Yes! - Click here to apply
-Chris
46 Replies
Any idea if it'll cost extra or not?
caker
Linode Staff
@archon810:
Any idea if it'll cost extra or not?
It will not. And, we will have a plan for upgrading most, if not all, of the existing fleet.
-Chris
@caker:
@archon810:Any idea if it'll cost extra or not?
It will not. And, we will have a plan for upgrading most, if not all, of the existing fleet.-Chris
That sounds incredible.
Upvoted!
Sounds similar to "NetApp Flash Cache" is the basic idea the same?
When do you plan to roll it out to production systems in London?
Have MySQL iowait issues on 40Gb linode right now, investigating in possible solution..
@leshik:
Good news!
When do you plan to roll it out to production systems in London?
Have MySQL iowait issues on 40Gb linode right now, investigating in possible solution..
The beta only just started. I'm sure it'll be quite a while before they're ready to deploy it to actual production systems.
Benchmark from June 3rd (before the CPU/RAM upgrade)
Benchmark I just ran after the migration to a new host
Guys, any ETA on SSD upgrade/plans?
Thank you!
Are you going to dedicate a specific allocation of SSD to each linode, or will it just be shared across the whole host?
@archon810:
@caker:
@archon810:Any idea if it'll cost extra or not?
It will not. And, we will have a plan for upgrading most, if not all, of the existing fleet.-Chris
That sounds incredible.
Yes, so far it sure is. (incredible)
I just migrated to an SSD-backed host today, and will begin testing this month (as early as this week)
(Someone on IRC answered my question about being able to run a pvgrub-loaded custom kernel. The answer was along the lines of "yes, the storage layer is handled on the dom0 host, so you can run your own kernel on the domU guest side of things and still get all the benefits of the linode SSD …" I forget, it was something along those lines though. I'm just feeling too lazy right now so I can't be bothered to look up exact quote or who said what)
Also, I'm really excited that my new host is finally one that runs the "linode NextGen" 2.6ghz E5-2670 (a non-zero number of linode customers got upgraded to 8 cores, but it was on hosts with the 2.13ghz L5630 or otherwise similarly "nice, but disappointing" hardware to what I've been on for the past 4 months)
http://youtu.be/-KSryJXDpZo
While I appreciate the opportunity to participate in the SSD beta, sticking customers who all pay the same price on different hardware kinda "feels unfair"
Just some food for thought / sharing my $0.02 on the subject.
If Linode staff can comment, how's the beta progressing? Any plans for new locations? (London London!
I no longer have the problems with disk IO as my main bottleneck, now everything is pretty much CPU-bound like it should be
One thing to note is that the box is shown as having a E5-2680 V2 CPU which is the first time I've seen that model on a Linode, the best I've seen before is the E5-2670 V2 (which is also good). It's good to see Linode are keeping their hardware fresh.
caker
Linode Staff
-Chris
@caker:
Hey guys - we're hard at work on the SSD effort, and it's quite exciting. We hope to have a bunch of announcements related to this beta (and more) sometime in Q1 of 2014. Stay tuned!
-Chris
Thank's for your feedback, Chris.
caker
Linode Staff
-Chris
@jebblue:
I don't trust SSD which is just flash storage. Flash wears out, disks can last for decades.
That's only true for the low end consumer SSD's.
Current enterprise SSDs are at least as reliable as magnetic disks, they can take many years of constant full-speed IO.
Fingers crossed…
Of course if it is possible to migrate an existing Linode to the hybrid SSD hosts then this will be less of an issue. Will it be possible to migrate existing hosts?
@Cromulent:
Is there any information on when this will be launched? I'm about to deploy several servers and I don't want to deploy to a standard Linode only to find out later that I should have waited for the hybrid SSD hosts.
Of course if it is possible to migrate an existing Linode to the hybrid SSD hosts then this will be less of an issue. Will it be possible to migrate existing hosts?
In the past it has always been possible to migrate. So I'm certain it will be possible this time as well.
I'm also very interested in this, hopefully we'll get some more info soon
@Cromulent:
Is there any information on when this will be launched? I'm about to deploy several servers and I don't want to deploy to a standard Linode only to find out later that I should have waited for the hybrid SSD hosts.
Of course if it is possible to migrate an existing Linode to the hybrid SSD hosts then this will be less of an issue. Will it be possible to migrate existing hosts?
@caker:
Hey guys - we're hard at work on the SSD effort, and it's quite exciting. We hope to have a bunch of announcements related to this beta (and more) sometime in Q1 of 2014. Stay tuned!
-Chris
@caker:
@archon810:Any idea if it'll cost extra or not?
It will not. And, we will have a plan for upgrading most, if not all, of the existing fleet.-Chris
These quotes should about answer your questions.
@caker:
Hey guys - we're hard at work on the SSD effort, and it's quite exciting. We hope to have a bunch of announcements related to this beta (and more) sometime in Q1 of 2014. Stay tuned!
-Chris
EDIT: So today is Q2 2014. fingers crossed
@XReaper:
A little birdie told me something big was happening at linode mid-April
I want your birdies to be right
I really feel like this whole thread has become a TL;DR (for my own tastes / reading habits) so if you don't feel like answering that's fine I guess.
^ As far as I can tell, if I get kicked off the SSD beta linode host in the future, there's a good chance I'll be downgraded from 8 CPU cores to just 2.
I'm not happy about this.
@kuzetsa:
If my current host was the one I got moved to during the beta and the SSD thing rolls out to everyone, will I need another migration or is the basic configuration going to stay the same for me and I won't need any further migrations or… something else?
I really feel like this whole thread has become a TL;DR (for my own tastes / reading habits) so if you don't feel like answering that's fine I guess.
kuzetsa,
If you have a specific question regarding one or more of your Linodes, you should open a support ticket. You can't rely on a timely response - or any response - from anyone on the Linode team in the forums.