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Question

Using non-enterprise SSD with Dell Server

Mar 16, 2016 10:22AM PDT

I work for a nonprofit organization that contracts with a local IT outfit. We are currently using three enterprise SSD drives in our Dell PowerEdge R820 rig, set up in a RAID 5 configuration. We have been having discussions about upping our capacity to at least 1 TB (possibly 2 TB), because we always seem to be up against our capacity limit as things stand now.

The contracted IT outfit has recommended three Samsung SM863 SATA 1.92TB (Enterprise) drives to replace the current drives. Their cost on the drives was going to bring our total to around $6,000 (not including labor). Of course, you can buy these drives direct from Samsung for $1,260. This is where my mistrust of this recommendation began to grow, as a $1,000 price difference from OEM versus the IT outfit is very odd to say the least.

I've done a bit of research and found that when it comes to solid state, the enterprise drives have about the same median lifespan as the consumer level drives, like the Samsung EVO 850 1TB, which sell for considerably less money (around $300 each). The median lifespan on the 850 EVO 1.5 million hours versus the enterprise level, which are 2 million hours. Further, I've also eyed the Samsung PRO 850 1 TB drives, which sell for about $450 per drive and have a lifespan equal to the Enterprise drive at 1 million hours. These are a few of the articles I found about Enterprise versus Consumer:

https://www.backblaze.com/blog/enterprise-drive-reliability/

http://www.computerworld.com/article/2687068/consumer-drives-shown-to-be-more-reliable-than-enterprise-drives.html

The guy we contract with for IT is totally against using anything less than Enterprise-level drives in our server. We currently have about 30 computers in our facility that are connected to the server at any given time.

My question is, what should we as a non-profit do in this situation? We have the ultimate authority over what hardware we use because we own the server. Should we go against the advice of our contracted tech and go with EVO or PRO drives or will we regret it down the line?

Given the price differences, we could afford to keep a couple of EVO or PRO drives as backup in case the drives fail. We could not do that with the Enterprise drives (if we can afford them at all). We can buy any of the drives direct from Samsung and get the OEM warranty of three years that come with them, too. I realize the warranty with Enterprise lasts longer, but for me it doesn't offset the huge difference in price.

Discussion is locked

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Answer
Tough area.
Mar 16, 2016 12:57PM PDT

You have the IT folk in white robes that will hold vigils for enterprise everything.

To top that off you found the dirty secret in those links.

The only time I have regrets is if I find our IT person is not keeping up with the backups.

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Answer
R+D time
Mar 17, 2016 12:48PM PDT
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This is why an enterprise would move to a Cloud OS.
Mar 17, 2016 8:45PM PDT

That was a server can go down in flames and nothing happens. But you know that old school servers are out there.