Best Settings for SSDs

[Peacock]

Hi,

I have done a bit of searching but am still confused as to what the best settings for SSDs are. I saw on this forum that LSFS was mentioned as the best as it reduces writes and increases SSD lifespan. But then when going to the blog for LSFS, it is mentioned that it is intended for slow mechanical spinning storage and not for SSDs. What causes more confusion is that both the forum post and the article were written by the same staff member, so I am not sure if it is just a misunderstanding or something.

I am using 500 GB SATA SSDs (consumer-grade Samsung 860 EVO) and have 2 of them per Blade in an IBM BladeCenter (6 Blades total). There is no mechanical spinning storage, this is purely SSD flash storage only. I am currently using a thick-provisioned file for StarWind vSAN on each SSD. What complicates this even more is that the SSDs are sitting behind a RAID controller, and even though no RAID is configured and the drives appear separately, TRIM support is not working because of the RAID controller. I am too scared of flashing the RAID controller into IT mode to enable TRIM support (basically turn it into a dummy HBA). This situation is leading to some slow write performance. I use these drives and StarWind vSAN for running Hyper-V VMs over iSCSI.

Any recommendations? Should I use LSFS or keep using thick-provisioned images? Must I instead just present an entire disk instead of using image files? I am confused as to what I must do with SSDs to ensure maximum performance.

Any help is appreciated.

[yaroslav (staff)]

Welcome to StarWind Forum!
LSFS is rather to be used for mechanical drives. Given the fact that you have SSDs, I'd recommend using the thick-provisioned images.
I'd recommend creating the RAID out of those disks using the settings recommended here https://knowledgebase.starwindsoftware. ... ssd-disks/. Individual disks do not provide server-level data redundancy and limit your HA device size to 500 GB. Creating Storage Spaces array is not necessary as you still can create the hardware RAID.
You still can continue using non-RAIDed disks, but I am worried about data redundancy within the server.
Also, please make sure to upgrade StarWind VSAN. Some old builds had issues with TRIM/UNMAP operations.

[qhackettq]

Welcome to StarWind Forum!
LSFS is rather to be used for mechanical drives. Given the fact that you have SSDs, I'd recommend using the thick-provisioned images.
I'd recommend creating the RAID out of those disks using the settings recommended here https://knowledgebase.starwindsoftware. ... ssd-disks/. Individual disks do not provide server-level data redundancy and limit your HA device size to 500 GB. Creating Storage Spaces array is not necessary as you still can create the hardware RAID.
You still can continue using non-RAIDed disks, but I am worried about data redundancy within the server.
Also, please make sure to upgrade StarWind VSAN. Some old builds had issues with TRIM/UNMAP operations.

Thanks for this Yaroslav, even I was looking for a similar link over the forum. Thanks again.

Regards,
Manuel D. Mitchell

[yaroslav (staff)]

You are always welcome.
Let me know if you have more questions.

[TimKing]

Thank you very much )
Your information was very useful to me too

[yaroslav (staff)]

You are welcome.