Posted on 24 June 2010. Tags: agility, ASSD, capacity, compression algorithm, cpu intel, drive, extreme memory, files zip, host os, intel pro, paragraph summary, performance, performance penalty, raid 0, reason, sata, sequential, SSDs, storage technology, test
OCZ’s Agility 2 120GB is a new generation of drive based on the SandForce SF-1200 controller. Unlike the OCZ Vertex LE and OCZ Vertex 2 drives, the Agility 2′s SandForce controller has an IOP limit artificially limited in firmware. With that being said, it is also cheaper than the Vertex 2 120GB and is still a very fast SSD, especially with compressible loads.
The short story of the SandForce controller is that it uses an internal encryption/ compression algorithm to write data to NAND faster than other drives. The SandForce based Agility 2 120GB is therefore fairly fast with compressed workloads (i.e. pictures, music files, zip files, ISOs, and etc) and much faster with compressible workloads such as office documents. Another major storyline is that SandForce is a fairly new player and the controllers are of unknown reliability. Finally, originally SandForce reserved much more space on drives in this capacity range for use in wear leveling, cache and etc. OCZ Agility 2 and Vertex 2 SandForce drives were originally 100GB but after being criticized for mediocre cost per GB and with little performance penalty moving from 28GB reserved (old drives were 100GB usable 28GB reserved) to 8GB reserved (new drives are 120GB usable 8GB reserved), the choice to enable the extra capacity was clear.
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Posted in Disk Subsystem Performance
Posted on 29 April 2010. Tags: agility, conjecture, counterparts, default installation, disk space requirement, hard drives, home server, Norco, Raid 1, redundancy, rpc, SAS, server machines, server storage, server v2, SSD, system os, vail, vertex, whs v2, WHS V2 Vail, Windows Home Server, windows home server v2, windows home server vail, x25
Many Windows Home Server machines utilize a smaller OS disk (oftentimes in Raid 1 for redundancy) and then large SATA 3.5″ disks for storage. Common 2.5″ disks are laptop drives as well as SSDs. Another factor influencing their popularity in home-built WHS boxes is the fact that the
Norco RPC-4220 (a popular home server 4U rackmount enclosure) has the ability to house two 2.5″ hard drives in addition to 20 SAS or SATA drives. Smaller form factor drives tend to be of lower capacity than larger 3.5″ counterparts, so some users may be wondering with the new requirement of a 160GB Operating System (OS) disk in Windows Home Server (WHS) V2 Vail if it is possible to lower the OS disk space requirement.
Posted in Windows Home Server
