Web hosting and SSD
 

Do any of you run your sites on SSD?

i was browsing zappos the other day and their site is super fast lately , got into thinking if they run it on bunch of ssd's

doubt it, have never heard of a host using SSD...

Plenty of hosts use SSD - at least if they are smart :)

There are specific use-cases for them, and allows scaling of some specific applications far cheaper than using other technologies.

Of course, slapping a random SSD into your standard LAMP webserver likely will have detrimental effects on performance. They are useful for very specific I/O requirements, and it even depends on the type of SSD what those are.

Some hosts will for an additional charge let you run specifics on an SSD, like the operating system, heavy file caching, large log files and a few other access heavy stuff.

I have several clients running SSD's. Some alone, some in RAID configurations.

Yes, they do yield significant performance increases over SATA/SAS drives, however you need to be brand conscious when selecting them, and also understand the specific resource usage they will be subjected to, to accurately forecast a general % increase in overall site performance.

If you have any questions about a specific project or you've been looking at upgrading to a SSD equipped server, I'll be happy to provide you with a free in-depth consultation to determine if you really need SSD's and if so, what configuration would be most beneficial for you. :)

it was rather general question to see if anyone runs their sites on SSDs and how they like it

Phil, how are you doing? are you planning on pimping new design anytime in the future?)
Why would you say regular LAMP server could potentially be hurting performance with SSD? i'm not yet familiar with this technology, read there were issues re degrading performance of SSDs in the past, not sure how that changed from couple of years ago. I'll be trying out SSD on my workstation soon. Just thought they maybe even more useful in web hosting space especially in clusters if they are that good.

SSD reads are usually very fast, but writes can be slow, especially if there are frequent writes, such as journalling, as there often is on a typical small web server.

Ron

Phatservers see my sig :)