I'm building a new server which will be running a text search service for our online web services. This service requires fast IO so I am trying to further reduce any potential bottlenecks. I would love to hear some recommendations on SSD's (or alternatives), hardware controllers, make and models, good stories, bad stories, or anything else relevant. The indexes this service will be building should be small so I think a 64GB drive would be much more than adequate.
Thanks in advance!
edit: the budget I have to work with would be around $4,000 CDN.
fusion-io is doing some interesting stuff with SSD storage on PCIe cards. The drives aren't very large, but sounds like that isn't an issue for you.
I've seen a pretty impressive demo, but haven't bought one myself yet.
Another PCIe card similar to fusion-io is OCZ. You can get larger drives, but you will pay some big bucks. But if you need the performance (upwards of 750 MB/s) it might be worth it. It's still cheaper than SAN drives.
I don't have any anecdotal information... you are on the bleeding edge.
Could you tell us your approximate budget? For super tight budgets you could use the Intel X25-M drive, around $300 for 80GB. Then there's a step up to the Intel X25-E drive, around $800 for 64GB. Both of these are standard SATA drives. Then a big jump in both price and performance to the 80GB fusionio SSD PCI-e card for around $3,500.
One thing in particular to look at is IO per second, or IOPS. Often SSD reviews will only quote you the maximum transfer rates, but the really important stat is usually IOPS. Especially for doing things like database queries or searches.
Personally, I'd suggest looking at RAID10 across, say, 4 SATA-II channels with something like these: 256GB (700USD ea) or 128GB (285USD ea).
I presume a RAID0 would work, too - and may be faster? Not sure on that, though :)