Darren Spruell [phatbuck...@gmail.com] wrote:
> I don't have a great deal of experience with SSD disks but was spec'ing
> some systems to use them. We'd be doing RAID on the hosts and I'd prefer
> to have something supported by bio(4) for volume management. Do SSDs
> have any impact on ability to do this? Or can one use the same HW RAID
> controllers for volume management and bio(4) doesn't have to deal with
> any differences? Or do SSDs typically require special RAID controllers?
> 
> Looking at Dell R420s and hoping the PERC controller + SSD combination
> will work under bio(4) (although knowing precisely the driver/controller
> would be necessary, I realize).

SSDs mimic the same interface of any hard disk, bioctl doesn't treat them
any differently than any other disk.

Using them in RAID isn't typically the best idea, if you are worried
about write failures bringing the disks to a halt. At least, some failure
modes will affect all SSDs *at the same time* in a RAID configuration
because the SSDs all receive a similar number of write requests and data.

If the softraid develops TRIM support then you'll get better write performance
(although if I'm reading right, some modern SSDs use tricks to minimize the
need for TRIM?)

I waited until, uhh, now just to use SSDs in server applications. And I'm
still only counting on them lasting for 2 or 3 years

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