ZFS Consumer grade SSD Suggestions

S

semi-ambivalent

For no particular reason I thought I'd go to a single SSD/zfs for my computer. Important data is served via NFS and is backed up weekly so my drive needs are 'not critical' :). Of all the SSDs out there are there any to be recommended over any other for use with FreeBSD? Or are those days behind us?

Thx!
s-a
 
semi-ambivalent, I've used a variety of Micron/Crucial, Samsung and Intel SSDs with FreeBSD and ZFS, and they've all worked just fine.

I do remember hearing some vendor advice on a BSDNow episode; if I remember correctly, they discussed and recommended avoiding a common brand, yet I can't remember which brand it was (sorry). Maybe this'll jog somebody else's memory. The episode may have happened a year or two ago, so it might not be easy to find (and may not even be relevant any more).

I've heard generally negative things about the cheapest brands (OCZ comes to mind).
 
I like the Samsung PRO series as they are a little faster than the EVO series, and they use to be the only Samsung SSDs with a 5 year warranty. However, the current 860 EVO has the same 5 year warranty.
 
In SSDs, there is a huge difference in build quality, which comes from over provisioning: All flash chips in SSDs will eventually wear out, but not all at the same time. SSD vendors deal with that by over-provisioning: If you buy a 1000 GB SSD (just as an example), it might have anywhere between 1100 and 3000 GB of flash in it; the one with 3x over provisioning will live for a long time, even under write-intensive workloads. Obviously, the price between those will also be radically different.

If you can afford a drive with 5-year warranty, that's goodness, because those drives are typically intended for enterprise use, and typically much better built. In spinning disk drives, the length of the warranty seems to be the best statistical predictor of the average life span; I assume (without proof or experience) that the same business logic that goes into that applies to SSDs (after all, they come from the same vendor).

Having said that: I've had no failures at all with about a dozen consumer-grade Intel SSDs (which are by now roughly 5 or 6 years old), and with two Crucial SSDs (those are coming up on 3 or 4 years). But that's not a statistically significant sample.
 
NVMe drives cost not much more than a conventional SSD. I think you should seriously consider them.
Same brand names are involved. I went the Toshiba 512GB NVMe route. Put it on a paddle card in an x8 slot.
Goes faster than 3 SSD's. Not really much more expensive either. You do need a PCIe 3.0 x8 slot for full effect.
I have not tried mine with ZFS. Only supported on newer motherboards (since Haswell).
 
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