Solid State Drive/SSD and SharePoint Server 2010, Project Server 2010 Demo Image Benchmark – Take 2 - Christophe Fiessinger's Blog - Site Home

Following this post from last may: Solid State Drive/SSD and SharePoint Server, Project Server Demo Image Benchmark I have had the chance to test two more Solid State Drives to demo Project Server 2010/Server SharePoint Server 2010 at our Microsoft Project Conference event last week. Lots of you have been asking what hardware/software was used for the super fast keynote demos for instance. The answer a Dell Latitude E6400 Dual Core T9900 @ 3.06 GHz with 8GB, with Windows Server 2008 R2 and Hyper-V and most importantly a secondary hard drive: a 160GB Intel Solid State Drive (SSDSA2MH160G1GC).

Please find below results running on a Dell E6400 for the following two SSD:

Intel Solid State Driver SSDSA2MH160G1GC - 160GB
Samsung MMCRE28G5MXP-0VB -128GB

Key Takeaways:

Not all Solid State Drives are created equal :) but as usual budget might be a factor in your purchase decision (average read of 201 MB/sec for the Intel vs. 170 MB/sec for the Samsung, or 81 MB/sec for the older generation Samsung SSD). There are plenty of sites to help you shop around, see links at the bottom of this post + Bing Bing Bing. So if you buy a new laptop check the SSD that it comes with (specifically the brand and its performance)
The Intel SSD is significantly faster than the Samsung SSD
Both generate significant performance gains to run demo images (Project Server/SharePoint Server 2010 demo image/VHD for instance), and hence are a must in my humble opinion if you are going to demo Project Server 2010/SharePoint Server 2010 extensively
All SDD were mounted internally (replaced DVD bay with HD bay)
If you are planning to have an external SSD ensure its connected to the laptop using eSATA so transfer speed is optimal
Don’t invest in faster CPU or RAM first, spend money on a fast SSD first!
If you are planning to purchase a new laptop buy the SSD separately so you know exactly what you are getting
As a reference I have included below the performance benchmark of the Dell primary hard drive, a traditional “spindle” drive (Western Digital WD800BJKT, 80GB)

I have also tested the Samsung on a HP 8530W (2 Intel Extreme Q9300 @2.53 GHz (four core), 8GB + Windows Server 2008 R2) and found similar results, more CPU does help but does not improve performance as much as a faster SSD.