Review: Samsung EVO, PRO SSDs Well Suited To The Data Center

Since the debut of Samsung-branded solid-state drives in 2011, the company has continued to innovate and improve drive performance and durability. The market has responded. In less than four years, Samsung grew to be the third-largest SSD supplier in North America, a position it has held for the last two years running. That's according to the Top 10 Best-Selling SSD Brands of 2014, a report published by researcher NPD Group that's based on sales data from North American technology distributors.

[Related: Samsung 850 EVO SSD Stacked for Speed]

The company continued to innovate in 2014 with the 845DC PRO and 845DC EVO, two new series of SSDs that are designed for the performance demands and endurance rigors of the data center. The 845DC PRO drives employ Samsung's 3-D V-NAND technology to improve performance and capacity by reducing the hardware's footprint. They're available in 400-GB and 800-GB capacities and list for $959 and $1,829, respectively. The 845DC EVO drives use the less expensive toggle MLC NAND technology. They come in 240-GB, 480-GB and 960-GB capacities and list for $279, $549 and $899. For review, Samsung sent the CRN Test Center an 800-GB PRO drive and a 240-GB EVO model.

The value-priced 240DC EVO exceeded or drew near its rating in every category. For 32K sequential reads, it delivered a peak sustained data transfer rate of performance of 519 MBps, close to its theoretical maximum of 530 MBps. It did so with sequential and random reads. Its sustained write rate in tests was 263 MBps for sequential and 229 MBps for random writes of 32K blocks; it's rated at 270 MBps. For transaction processing, the drive delivered 76K IOps for random reads of 512-byte blocks and 45K for random writes. Samsung's published performance numbers are for 4K blocks, with which the EVO sustained 87K IOps on random reads and 12K on random writes. The larger-capacity EVO drives are rated to deliver faster performance in most categories, in sequential writes.

The more performant PRO drive delivered its best performance when with sequential writes of 32K blocks. IOmeter reported a sustained rate of 450 MBps; it's rated at 460 MBps. With sequential reads of the same size, it delivered 378 MBps against a rating of 530 MBps. Testers also observed a sustained rate of 405 MBps with random writes of 32K blocks. For transactions, the drive delivered a peak sustained rate of 128K IOps with sequential reads of 512-bytes blocks. Samsung didn't publish a corresponding result for that test. However, testers observed a maximum rate for random reads of 78K for 512-byte blocks against a rating of 92K for 4K blocks.

Inside both drive lines is Samsung's tri-core MDX Controller, which employs one core for read operations, another for writes, and a third for garbage collection and other tasks. Both include Samsung's terrific data migration software and SSD management software and a five-year warranty. The PRO drive's endurance rating is the equivalent of 10 full write-erase cycles per day. Samsung PRO and EVO drives are recommended by the CRN Test Center.

PUBLISHED MARCH 17, 2015