If SSDs are so great, shouldn’t we see the results in TPC-C benchmarks? They are, and we do.

But there are some surprises.

Cost
Looking at the TPC-C top 10 performance results showed the dramatic impact SSDs have had on the cost per thousand transactions (tpmC).

  • There are no top-10 disk-only results after 2009.
  • The most expensive top-10 SSD result is some 15% cheaper than the least expensive disk-based result – and the other SSD results are much less.
  • No top-10 results posted during 2009 – the depth of the great recession.

Capacity
The conventional wisdom has it that disks must be way over-configured to get enough IOPS. You’d expect to see disk solutions have a lot more capacity than SSD solutions in top-10 results.

But we don’t:


The highest capacity – 1760 TB – is for an Oracle SSD-based solution. Yet the lowest capacity solution – 83 TB – is also SSD-based and is also the cheapest per tpmC.

Are we seeing issues with the rest of the infrastructure?

The StorageMojo take
I’ll be taking a deeper dive into the data, but perceptions may be at odds with what this limited set of performance focused benchmarks is showing us.

Readers: what do you think?

Courteous comments welcome, of course. Events beyond my control have reduced StorageMojo’s usual posting frequency. Hope to get things back to normal over the next several weeks.