SSD for workstation running VMs

[nutingut]

Hi! My workstation has an i7-5820K with a motherboard that provides an M.2 slot (PCI-E 3.0 x4). I'm a software developer and plan on having some virtual machines running (database server, deployment test servers, permanent VM for running windows applications etc).

I want my VMs to run as fast as possible, but at the same time, I do not want to pay more than necessary. Would a 950 PRO NVMe M.2 SSD be overkill in my situation resp. would I notice a difference to, e.g., a Sandisk x400 M.2 drive, which is way cheaper at the moment? Which SSD would you recommend?

Thanks!

 

[Redstorm]

When you say some VM's i would lean towards the intel 750, better at that server kind of workload. the 950 would be fine, X400 is SATA so you wouldn't get the advantage of a PCIe SSD. I have a 950 pro in my 5820k and love it.

 

[nutingut]

Hmm, the Intel one is a bit more expensive and smaller too, so I'd have to get the even more costly 800GB model. That will probably blow my budget.

Another related question: is it true that the boot times of NVMe SSDs is higher than for AHCI SSDs? In particular, I think I read somewhere that the 750 is very slow to boot.

 

[Redstorm]

Not true for all nvme SSD's, Intel 750 was initially very slow but a firmware update speed it ups somewhat but still not as fast as the 950 boots. i.e my desktop appears just after one circle of the windows 10 spinner. ~7seconds from button press, must be set to UEFI boot though otherwise the system goes through the legacy BIOS post first.

 

[nutingut]

Ok, thanks for clearing that up.

 

[nutingut]

One more question: Would it be better to have one Intel 750 for OS + VMs or two 850 Evo's, one for OS and the other for VMs?

 

[Madpacket]

One more question: Would it be better to have one Intel 750 for OS + VMs or two 850 Evo's, one for OS and the other for VMs?

I'm doing something similar with an X99/5930K. I did a comparison between the Intel and Samsung NVME drives and ended up going with the Samsung 950 Pro 512GB as it offers a better value. It's extremely fast (faster than the Intel drive in most cases) except in large queue depths. I'm not sure running multiple VM's at the same time will stress queue depths but maybe a very heavily loaded database will.

That being said I will testing out a bunch of use cases soon with virtual machines and different types of storage. For OS + main software applications (and Steam of course the 512GB Samsung 950 Pro will be driving it. 4x256GB Samsung 850 Evo's where the majority of my virtual machines and games will reside. Each Evo drive was very cheap at around $80 CAD and striped blow away any current non NVME 1TB SSD less money. Also be using a raid mirror with 3TB Hitachi drives to periodically back everything up.

However in the end I would focus on adding as much RAM as you can rather than worrying about your SSD's unless you like to play around with weird scenarios like I do. I have 64GB of RAM now (and just ordered another 64GB) to give me 128GB to max out my system memory. This way I create a decent sized RAM drive and test very I/O intensive things on it like databases within VM's with VT-D and compare that to NVME and traditional cheap raid stripes.

In your case keep it simple and add at least 32GB RAM (64 if you want to play with RAM drives) and a Samsung NVMe boot drive. Perhaps pickup two 512GB Evo's for your container storage (stripe them) and then a simple 2TB mirror for backup (or if you have a NAS skip this last step altogether).

 

[frowertr]

I think the Sammy NVMe is overkill here but will work fine. I'd get a dedicated 850 PRO SATA for a bit of cost savings. Have another SSD for your OS.