Groups > uk.comp.sys.mac > #117443 > unrolled thread

Five years later... Intel launches Fusion Drive for Wintel...

Started by	glawrie <gavin.lawrie@2gc.eu>
First post	2017-04-26 19:20 +0100
Last post	2017-05-01 09:02 +0000
Articles	20 on this page of 46 — 12 participants

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#117494

From	nospam <nospam@nospam.invalid>
Date	2017-04-29 10:22 -0400
Message-ID	<290420171022049098%nospam@nospam.invalid>
In reply to	#117493

In article <7g69gch7rio045rnv4pme5dc8291jssj37@4ax.com>, Jaimie
Vandenbergh <jaimie@sometimes.sessile.org> wrote:

> >> >Who cares about Fusion drives? The idea is almost obsolete.
> >> 
> >> Was my first response when Apple released them. "That's neat but is a
> >> very short term stopgap solution... SSDs will get bigger quickly, and
> >> Apple will ditch spinning rust as soon as possible". 
> >
> >hds also continue to get bigger, and will always be cheaper per
> >gigabyte, at least for the foreseeable future.
> 
> They'll become ever more niche over the next five years. Datacentre bulk
> storage only after that, where the economics will work for maybe another
> five years or so.

hds will still be cheaper and that won't be changing any time soon.

there's a place for fast ssd and also a place for high capacity hard
drives.

fusion was intended to meet in the middle, provide a lot of capacity,
while keeping the most common files on ssd for speed, doing it entirely
automatically. it mostly works. 

> But you can get 60TB SSD (not a typo) in a 3.5" size case. The writing
> is very much on the wall for spinning disks since they already only have
> price/byte advantage and that's temporary. Data density, speed, iops,
> watts per TB - SSDs already win.

i don't think that's available yet, particularly since i can't find a
price for it. however, estimates last year were *not* cheap, in the
range of a new car or even a small house:

<https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2016/08/seagate-unveils-60tb-ssd-the-wo
rlds-largest-hard-drive/>
  The 60TB SSD was unveiled at the Flash Memory Summit in
  California‹the same location that Samsung chose to reveal its 15.36TB
  SSD last year, which at the time was the world's largest hard drive.
...
  When the Samsung drive finally started to trickle out this year there
  were reports that it cost upwards of £8,000 or $10,000. Likewise,
  Seagate isn't planning to release the 60TB drive immediately, but may
  release it early next year. Pricing is anyone's guess, but you
  probably won't get much change from £30,000 or $40,000‹about £0.50
  per gig, which is actually fairly reasonable... if you have 30 grand
  to blow, anyway.

for a small fraction of that price, i would configure *two* raids using
eight 10tb drives each, giving 60 tb usable storage with 2 drives worth
of parity/redundancy, along with an ssd for caching, with the second
raid used to back up the first.

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#117500

From	JF Mezei <jfmezei.spamnot@vaxination.ca>
Date	2017-04-29 14:13 -0400
Message-ID	<5904d7e4$0$42067$c3e8da3$3a1a2348@news.astraweb.com>
In reply to	#117494

On 2017-04-29 10:22, nospam wrote:

> fusion was intended to meet in the middle, provide a lot of capacity,
> while keeping the most common files on ssd for speed, doing it entirely
> automatically. it mostly works. 

In an enterprise environment, system managers know which files are
active which aren't and this is pretty static. So Fusion isn't really
necessary.

And from a backup point of view, they prefer separate logical disks with
very dynamic data on one and static applications on another.

Depending on implementation, if the catalogue resides on the first disk,
and you lose that disk, you also effectively lose the second disk.  That
is a unnecessary risk when you can manually tune your system onto 2
separate disks.

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#117501

From	nospam <nospam@nospam.invalid>
Date	2017-04-29 14:19 -0400
Message-ID	<290420171419152968%nospam@nospam.invalid>
In reply to	#117500

In article <5904d7e4$0$42067$c3e8da3$3a1a2348@news.astraweb.com>, JF
Mezei <jfmezei.spamnot@vaxination.ca> wrote:

> 
> > fusion was intended to meet in the middle, provide a lot of capacity,
> > while keeping the most common files on ssd for speed, doing it entirely
> > automatically. it mostly works. 
> 
> In an enterprise environment, system managers know which files are
> active which aren't and this is pretty static. So Fusion isn't really
> necessary.

this may come to you as a surprise, but macs are used outside of
enterprise.

furthermore, system managers don't want to keep track of every single
file on each computer.

> And from a backup point of view, they prefer separate logical disks with
> very dynamic data on one and static applications on another.

you really don't understand what fusion is, do you?

> Depending on implementation, if the catalogue resides on the first disk,
> and you lose that disk, you also effectively lose the second disk.  That
> is a unnecessary risk when you can manually tune your system onto 2
> separate disks.

keep digging yourself a hole.

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#117502

From	JF Mezei <jfmezei.spamnot@vaxination.ca>
Date	2017-04-29 14:52 -0400
Message-ID	<5904e0d6$0$8192$b1db1813$2411a48f@news.astraweb.com>
In reply to	#117501

On 2017-04-29 14:19, nospam wrote:

> furthermore, system managers don't want to keep track of every single
> file on each computer.

In an enterprise environment, they keep track of very active files, such
as database files.

> you really don't understand what fusion is, do you?

Fusion binds 2 physical disks into one logical disk. Is that wrong?

Fusion has software which moves files from one physical disk to the
other based on activity (so transparent to the apps that access the
logical disk). is that wrong ?

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#117503

From	nospam <nospam@nospam.invalid>
Date	2017-04-29 14:57 -0400
Message-ID	<290420171457139635%nospam@nospam.invalid>
In reply to	#117502

In article <5904e0d6$0$8192$b1db1813$2411a48f@news.astraweb.com>, JF
Mezei <jfmezei.spamnot@vaxination.ca> wrote:

> 
> > furthermore, system managers don't want to keep track of every single
> > file on each computer.
> 
> 
> In an enterprise environment, they keep track of very active files, such
> as database files.

database files would be on a central server, not on each person's
computer.

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#117504

From	JF Mezei <jfmezei.spamnot@vaxination.ca>
Date	2017-04-29 15:32 -0400
Message-ID	<5904ea37$0$22740$c3e8da3$33881b6a@news.astraweb.com>
In reply to	#117503

On 2017-04-29 14:57, nospam wrote:

> database files would be on a central server, not on each person's
> computer.

I wasn't discussing deslktop I was discussing data centre.  The original
allegation was that spinning disks would disappear alltogether.

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#117505

From	nospam <nospam@nospam.invalid>
Date	2017-04-29 15:32 -0400
Message-ID	<290420171532548122%nospam@nospam.invalid>
In reply to	#117504

In article <5904ea37$0$22740$c3e8da3$33881b6a@news.astraweb.com>, JF
Mezei <jfmezei.spamnot@vaxination.ca> wrote:

> 
> > database files would be on a central server, not on each person's
> > computer.
> 
> I wasn't discussing deslktop I was discussing data centre.  The original
> allegation was that spinning disks would disappear alltogether.

everything will, eventually.

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#117506

From	Lewis <g.kreme@gmail.com.dontsendmecopies>
Date	2017-04-29 19:53 +0000
Message-ID	<slrnog9s0h.2suk.g.kreme@snow.local>
In reply to	#117494

In message <290420171022049098%nospam@nospam.invalid> nospam <nospam@nospam.invalid> wrote:
> In article <7g69gch7rio045rnv4pme5dc8291jssj37@4ax.com>, Jaimie
> Vandenbergh <jaimie@sometimes.sessile.org> wrote:

>> >> >Who cares about Fusion drives? The idea is almost obsolete.
>> >> 
>> >> Was my first response when Apple released them. "That's neat but is a
>> >> very short term stopgap solution... SSDs will get bigger quickly, and
>> >> Apple will ditch spinning rust as soon as possible". 
>> >
>> >hds also continue to get bigger, and will always be cheaper per
>> >gigabyte, at least for the foreseeable future.
>> 
>> They'll become ever more niche over the next five years. Datacentre bulk
>> storage only after that, where the economics will work for maybe another
>> five years or so.

> hds will still be cheaper and that won't be changing any time soon.

Not cheaper enough, however, to make up for the speed difference.

I *could* have put a 2TB drive in my laptop, but a 599GB SSD was the
same price and made my laptop significantly faster, cooler, and the
battery lasts a bit longer too (probably has more to do with the cooler
aspect than the SSD per se).

> there's a place for fast ssd and also a place for high capacity hard
> drives.

The place for high capacity hard drives is in the server closet. But as
soon as 4K video becomes a thing, they won't be of much use there
either.

I currently have 5TB drives in my NAS, which I expect I will be able to
replace with 16TB SSDs in 5 years for a reasonable amount of money. and
much larger drives already exist.

Sure, I COULD spend $10,000 on a 16TB SSD right now, but in 5y I expect
they will be well under $1000.

> fusion was intended to meet in the middle, provide a lot of capacity,
> while keeping the most common files on ssd for speed, doing it entirely
> automatically. it mostly works. 

Yep.

-- 
The Nixon I remembered was absolutely humorless; I couldn't imagine
him laughing at anything except maybe a paraplegic who wanted to vote
Democratic but couldn't quite reach the lever on the voting machine.
 — Hunter S Thompson

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#117510

From	Ian McCall <ian@eruvia.org>
Date	2017-04-29 22:59 +0100
Message-ID	<emkgmtFgas9U2@mid.individual.net>
In reply to	#117494

On 2017-04-29 14:22:04 +0000, nospam <nospam@nospam.invalid> said:

> there's a place for fast ssd and also a place for high capacity hard
> drives.
> 
> fusion was intended to meet in the middle, provide a lot of capacity,
> while keeping the most common files on ssd for speed, doing it entirely
> automatically. it mostly works.

I'm extremely happy with my home-grown one. The 2011 iMac is night and 
day now, and I'm not faffing micro-managing storage either. I hope I 
get another round of OS upgrades out of it, though must admit I'm 
doubtful.


Cheers,
Ian
-- 
Check out Proto the album: <http://studioicm.com/proto/>

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#117511

From	Jolly Roger <jollyroger@pobox.com>
Date	2017-04-29 22:04 +0000
Message-ID	<emkgvlFg94vU1@mid.individual.net>
In reply to	#117510

On 2017-04-29, Ian McCall <ian@eruvia.org> wrote:
> On 2017-04-29 14:22:04 +0000, nospam <nospam@nospam.invalid> said:
>
>> there's a place for fast ssd and also a place for high capacity hard
>> drives.
>> 
>> fusion was intended to meet in the middle, provide a lot of capacity,
>> while keeping the most common files on ssd for speed, doing it entirely
>> automatically. it mostly works.
>
> I'm extremely happy with my home-grown one.

Same here with multiple Fusion Drives on several machines. Fusion Drives
give you lots of cheap space with speeds far faster than HD speeds due
to the SSD. What's not to like?

-- 
E-mail sent to this address may be devoured by my ravenous SPAM filter.
I often ignore posts from Google. Use a real news client instead.

JR

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#117499

From	JF Mezei <jfmezei.spamnot@vaxination.ca>
Date	2017-04-29 14:07 -0400
Message-ID	<5904d680$0$22725$c3e8da3$33881b6a@news.astraweb.com>
In reply to	#117493

On 2017-04-29 09:58, Jaimie Vandenbergh wrote:

> They'll become ever more niche over the next five years. Datacentre bulk
> storage only after that, where the economics will work for maybe another
> five years or so.

Because at the moment, SSDs are still sold at a premiumn due to their
~slightly~ better performance, their commoditization to bring prices
down  may be slowed considerably. But it will happen.

Also, at enterprise level, very active disks (think airline reservation
systems with constant update of RECORDS) may remain on spinning platters
for longer due to life limitations of SSDs.

This could change with changes in large database engine designs (Oracle,
DB2) to be designed to operate on SSDs (much the same way Apple tuned
APFS with knowledge you can't update a block on an SSD).

But something like Google where vast majority of operations are read
only would want to switch to SSDs, not only for performance, but also
power/noise/heat which would greatly reduce data centre operating costs.

The other possibility: new storage tech developped to replace NAND flash
with something which can handle updating blocks efficiently and without
limkitation on how many times a bloock can be rewritten. (aka holy grail)

BTW, back in early 1990s, PDA pionner PSION had a great design for its
small database and proprietary FLASH cards.

NAND cannot set a 1 to a 0. But it can set a 0 to a 1.  So it was
possible to set flags to 1 without having to rewrite whole records to a
new location.

And because it didn't have modern "virtual" blocks where a janitor
resets blocks marked for deletion and makes them available again,
deleted records remain there (but with the "deleted" bit set, until you
used a "compress" command which rewrite the whole database to new
location, omitting all deleted records, and then making the bytes used
by old file available. (not sure of granularity, but it was either byte
or quad bytes, certaintly not block. (of course back then, we're
talkingg a couple of megabytes of storage, not giga or tera).

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#117508

From	Lewis <g.kreme@gmail.com.dontsendmecopies>
Date	2017-04-29 20:54 +0000
Message-ID	<slrnog9vhm.ibt.g.kreme@snow.local>
In reply to	#117499

In message <5904d680$0$22725$c3e8da3$33881b6a@news.astraweb.com> JF Mezei <jfmezei.spamnot@vaxination.ca> wrote:
> On 2017-04-29 09:58, Jaimie Vandenbergh wrote:

>> They'll become ever more niche over the next five years. Datacentre bulk
>> storage only after that, where the economics will work for maybe another
>> five years or so.

> Because at the moment, SSDs are still sold at a premiumn due to their
> ~slightly~ better performance,

What sort of hallucinogenics are you on?

> Also, at enterprise level, very active disks (think airline reservation
> systems with constant update of RECORDS) may remain on spinning platters
> for longer due to life limitations of SSDs.

No, they will remain on spinning platers for the same reason airliens
were still using 9-tracks in the early 2000s: Stupidity and paralyzing
fear of change.

-- 
Realizing the importance of the case, my men are rounding up twice the
usual number of suspects.

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#117496

From	Jolly Roger <jollyroger@pobox.com>
Date	2017-04-29 14:44 +0000
Message-ID	<emjn74Fbfh1U1@mid.individual.net>
In reply to	#117488

Elliott Roper <nospam@yrl.co.uk> wrote:
> 
> Who cares about Fusion drives? 

Oh! Me, me! I care! I use them constantly to combine large traditional hard
drives with speedy SSDs to give me tons of fast storage on my machines. I
love me some Fusion Drives! Thanks, Apple!

It's also in the fucking title of this entire thread; so if discussions
about it bother you, don't let the door hit your ass on the way out. : )

-- 
E-mail sent to this address may be devoured by my ravenous SPAM filter.
I often ignore posts from Google. Use a real news client instead.

JR

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#117489

From	JF Mezei <jfmezei.spamnot@vaxination.ca>
Date	2017-04-29 01:35 -0400
Message-ID	<5904262d$0$51708$c3e8da3$f6268168@news.astraweb.com>
In reply to	#117487

On 2017-04-29 00:30, Alan Baker wrote:

> It's nothing like RAID 0, either.

Raid 0 is combining multiple physical disks into one logical disk.

Fusion combines 2 physical disks into one logical disk.

Nothing like it eh ?

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#117490

From	Jaimie Vandenbergh <jaimie@sometimes.sessile.org>
Date	2017-04-29 09:39 +0100
Message-ID	<krj8gcddcs3tg5so8s06k8deh21q5lhdpf@4ax.com>
In reply to	#117489

On Sat, 29 Apr 2017 01:35:41 -0400, JF Mezei
<jfmezei.spamnot@vaxination.ca> wrote:

>On 2017-04-29 00:30, Alan Baker wrote:
>
>> It's nothing like RAID 0, either.
>
>Raid 0 is combining multiple physical disks into one logical disk.
>
>Fusion combines 2 physical disks into one logical disk.
>
>Nothing like it eh ?

RAID1, RAID5, RAID6, RAID10, JBOD, RAIDZ... are also combining multiple
physical disks into one logical disk. You've lost all utility in your
over-wide definition. Give it up.

Fusion is a logical pool of two physical asymmetric volumes with data
block migration tiered by speed depending on recent access count. That's
sod-all like RAID0, and calling it that is refusing to acknowledge *all*
of its interesting features.

	Cheers - Jaimie
-- 
Far away is close at hand in images of elsewhere

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#117497

From	Jolly Roger <jollyroger@pobox.com>
Date	2017-04-29 14:49 +0000
Message-ID	<emjnghFbh7aU1@mid.individual.net>
In reply to	#117489

JF Mezei <jfmezei.spamnot@vaxination.ca> wrote:
> On 2017-04-29 00:30, Alan Baker wrote:
> 
>> It's nothing like RAID 0, either.
> 
> Raid 0 is combining multiple physical disks into one logical disk.
> 
> Fusion combines 2 physical disks into one logical disk.

So you readily admit to the world you really are THAT ignorant...

> Nothing like it eh ?

Nothing at all like it. Nope.

-- 
E-mail sent to this address may be devoured by my ravenous SPAM filter.
I often ignore posts from Google. Use a real news client instead.

JR

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#117507

From	Lewis <g.kreme@gmail.com.dontsendmecopies>
Date	2017-04-29 19:58 +0000
Message-ID	<slrnog9s8o.2suk.g.kreme@snow.local>
In reply to	#117489

In message <5904262d$0$51708$c3e8da3$f6268168@news.astraweb.com> JF Mezei <jfmezei.spamnot@vaxination.ca> wrote:
> On 2017-04-29 00:30, Alan Baker wrote:

>> It's nothing like RAID 0, either.

> Raid 0 is combining multiple physical disks into one logical disk.

You saying it doesn't make it true. 

> Fusion combines 2 physical disks into one logical disk.

> Nothing like it eh ?

Nope. Nothing at all.




-- 
This is to say: while it was true that they had just appeared in this
particular set of dimensions, it was also true that they had been living
in them all along. It is at this point that normal language gives up,
and goes and has a drink. --Colour of Magic

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#117512

From	nmassello@yahoo.com (Neill Massello)
Date	2017-04-29 16:08 -0600
Message-ID	<1n593dk.7t3ygyr28cc2N%nmassello@yahoo.com>
In reply to	#117489

JF Mezei <jfmezei.spamnot@vaxination.ca> wrote:

> Raid 0 is combining multiple physical disks into one logical disk.
> 
> Fusion combines 2 physical disks into one logical disk.

Socrates is mortal. 

A fish is mortal. 

Therefore, Socrates is a fish.

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#117513

From	Fred <fredb@[127.0.0.1]>
Date	2017-04-29 23:35 +0100
Message-ID	<mpro.op703500adedp00cp@ypical.nospam.invalid>
In reply to	#117512

In message <1n593dk.7t3ygyr28cc2N%nmassello@yahoo.com>
     nmassello@yahoo.com (Neill Massello) wrote:

> JF Mezei <jfmezei.spamnot@vaxination.ca> wrote:
> 
> > Raid 0 is combining multiple physical disks into one logical disk.
> > 
> > Fusion combines 2 physical disks into one logical disk.
> 
> Socrates is mortal.
> 
> A fish is mortal.
> 
> Therefore, Socrates is a fish.

Was a fish :-p

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#117514

From	Jolly Roger <jollyroger@pobox.com>
Date	2017-04-29 22:44 +0000
Message-ID	<emkjafFgqq7U1@mid.individual.net>
In reply to	#117512

On 2017-04-29, Neill Massello <nmassello@yahoo.com> wrote:
> JF Mezei <jfmezei.spamnot@vaxination.ca> wrote:
>
>> Raid 0 is combining multiple physical disks into one logical disk.
>> 
>> Fusion combines 2 physical disks into one logical disk.
>
> Socrates is mortal. 
>
> A fish is mortal. 
>
> Therefore, Socrates is a fish. 

LOL! Exactly. : )

-- 
E-mail sent to this address may be devoured by my ravenous SPAM filter.
I often ignore posts from Google. Use a real news client instead.

JR

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csiph-web

Five years later... Intel launches Fusion Drive for Wintel...

Contents

#117494

#117500

#117501

#117502

#117503

#117504

#117505

#117506

#117510

#117511

#117499

#117508

#117496

#117489

#117490

#117497

#117507

#117512

#117513

#117514