Under Linux, we can monitor SSD wear fairly easily with smartmontools whether the drive is presented as a normal block device or a generic device (which happens when the drive has been hardware RAIDed by certain controllers such as the one on the IBM HS22).
How can we do the equivalent under Windows? Does anyone actually use smartmontools? Or are there other packages out there?
The problem is that SCSI Generic devices just don't show up in Windows. If the drives aren't RAIDed we can see them fine.
How I'd do it in Linux:
sles11-live:~ # lsscsi -g
[1:0:0:0] disk SMART USB-IBM 8989 /dev/sda /dev/sg0
[2:0:0:0] disk ATA MTFDDAK256MAR-1K MA44 - /dev/sg1
[2:0:1:0] disk ATA MTFDDAK256MAR-1K MA44 - /dev/sg2
[2:1:8:0] disk LSILOGIC Logical Volume 3000 /dev/sdb /dev/sg3
sles11-live:~ # smartctl -l ssd /dev/sg1
smartctl 5.42 2011-10-20 r3458 [x86_64-linux-2.6.32.49-0.3-default] (local build)
Copyright (C) 2002-11 by Bruce Allen, http://smartmontools.sourceforge.net
Device Statistics (GP Log 0x04)
Page Offset Size Value Description
7 ===== = = == Solid State Device Statistics (rev 1) ==
7 0x008 1 26~ Percentage Used Endurance Indicator
|_ ~ normalized value
sles11-live:~ # smartctl -l ssd /dev/sg2
smartctl 5.42 2011-10-20 r3458 [x86_64-linux-2.6.32.49-0.3-default] (local build)
Copyright (C) 2002-11 by Bruce Allen, http://smartmontools.sourceforge.net
Device Statistics (GP Log 0x04)
Page Offset Size Value Description
7 ===== = = == Solid State Device Statistics (rev 1) ==
7 0x008 1 3~ Percentage Used Endurance Indicator
|_ ~ normalized value
You need a utility provided by your raid controller. For example, most HP raid controllers have a compatible utility for reading the smart info from drives connected to their controllers.
Specifically for IBM servers, there is now a utility available to monitor this:
IBM SSD Wear Gauge CLI Utility v1.0 (Microsoft Windows Server 2003, 2008) - IBM BladeCenter and System x
and
IBM SSD Wear Gauge CLI Utility v1.0 (Linux) - IBM BladeCenter and System x