Last week The SSD Guy was at a conference for users of the open source MySQL database program. This is a gathering of foward-thinking mavericks who try new technologies ahead of many others. This group has been deeply involved with SSDs for at least the past four years.
Vadim Tkachenko, co-founder of Percona (the show’s sponsor) shared a lot of significant new research that he has performed over the past year on SSDs. I thought the chart in this post’s graphic was the most interesting one in his presentation. It illustrates an Intel 320 SSD’s performance across a range of file sizes.
The performance declines as the file size increases. As the file size grows the SSD has a declining amount of spare space to perform housekeeping.
This trend is similar to the performance measures spelled out in a report Objective Analysis compiled based on tests performed by Calypso Systems: Putting SSDs to the Test* and discussed in the blog post: Not All SSDs are Created Equal.
A priceless part of the presentation was when Mr. Tkachenko quipped: “We all know that benchmarks are lies. The SSD brings the lie to a whole new level!”
Percona has performed a lot of very useful research on SSDs in the MySQL environment. Anyone who is interested in this work can find out more on the Percona website.
* This report can be purchased for immediate download from the Objective Analysis website.