Micron M510DC (480GB) Enterprise SATA SSD Review
by Kristian Vättö on July 21, 2015 8:00 AM ESTFinal Words
I'll start with the positive sides of the M510DC. First off, the M510DC delivers higher endurance than the most read-focused drives. Samsung 845DC EVO and Intel's DC S3510 both come in at only 0.3 DWPD with SanDisk's CloudSpeed Eco being rated at 1 DWPD, so at 2 DWPD (1 for 960GB SKU), the M510DC is more durable than its direct competitors. Whether the extra endurance is beneficial depends on the workload because I would argue that for the most read-intensive workloads (such as media streaming and cloud storage) 0.3 DWPD is sufficient because such large amount of the data is static, but the higher endurance obviously opens the doors for usage in workloads with more write activity.
The second thing I like is the inclusion of TCG Enterprise encryption. Micron has always been at the forefront of encryption adoption and it was the first one in the industry to adopt TCG Opal 2.0 to its M500 client SSD. That extends with the M510DC as the company is bringing next generation encryption to the enterprise space. The advantage of TCG-E is the transparency to the host and ease of deployment because with a supported RAID card TCG-E won't require any additional installation. I don't expect TCG-E to be adopted very quickly in a large scale, but I do see the verticals (financial and medical institutions) having interest for the technology.
Unfortunately, the performance leaves room for improvement. In pure random write performance the M510DC is actually faster than its competitors, but when it comes to mixed and read performance it's outperformed by the 845DC EVO. Sequential read in particular is an area where the M510DC falls behind the EVO and frankly that's a quite important metric for a drive that's designed for read workloads.
Ultimately it's really the consistency that is M510DC's Achilles' heel, though. On average the performance is decent, but when digging deeper it turns out that the average hides significant variations in performance with worse drops being >10ms in latency. The importance of consistency depends on the application and some are more lenient than others, but in general it's critical for a drive to deliver performance that is good but also consistent, so the end-user will have a consistent user experience of whatever service the drive is powering.
All in all, it boils down to whether the pros outweigh the cons and whether the price reflects this. The M510DC is kind of a model in between the drives for read and mixed workloads. For performance sensitive read-centric applications, the 845DC EVO is a better pick because it delivers better read and mixed performance, and most importantly it's very consistent and power efficient. However, if write endurance is a bigger concern than performance and consistency, the M510DC is a viable alternative that is priced below the mixed workload drives (such as the M500DC), while still delivering competitive endurance at the expense of some performance and consistency.
Facebook
Twitter
RSS
22 Comments
View All Comments
Oyster - Tuesday, July 21, 2015 - link
Maybe I missed it, but warranty information?twizzlebizzle22 - Tuesday, July 21, 2015 - link
Would there be warrenty information available for the same reason price wasn't?My question is how longevity is affected from 1-2 DWPD
Rekkx - Wednesday, July 22, 2015 - link
5 year or NAND wear out, whichever comes first.marraco - Tuesday, July 21, 2015 - link
I whish to have also the tests for non enterprise SSDs.These drives are not meant for the mass consumer, but enthusiasts like to try, or at least know how enterprise hardware performs on common PCs.
And is not the same to have "an opinion", even if valid, that actually knowing the experimental data.
Somebody will answer that, obviously, enterprise SSDs have different performance and workload targets, but that is no reason to discard consumer tests.
There is a big difference between actually knowing how they work, and just making an educated guess.
Also, enterprise users need to know how common hardware performs on server environments, because sometimes is cost effective to use common hardware for enterprise.
For example, Google used lots of common hardware on his servers, and that gave him a large advantage over older companies, with larger budgets.
Also, server hardware tends to have large validation and life cycles, and that means that it tends to have obsolete hardware. Sometimes is reasonable to use cheaper hardware, which can fail, but also has lower costs of replacement, or other benefits.
DanNeely - Tuesday, July 21, 2015 - link
Agreed. Also, as prices drop SSDs will be making their way onto client OS VM servers; and those will mostly see amped up versions of client workloads on them.ZeDestructor - Friday, July 24, 2015 - link
You say that, but I recently picked up two 800GB Intel DC S3500 SSDs for use in my desktop, since they were near enough to the 960-1TB consumer drives, but brought me the nice benefit of full power-loss protection, higher performance than the Crucal M500/M550/M600/MX200 (though I doubt i'll ever notice it), and at $300 each, were really not that far from the $275 I've seen the 960GB M500 go down to.nils_ - Friday, July 24, 2015 - link
It's also always interesting to see if the price differential for "DC" hardware is justified or if you're just paying up for the label.otherwise - Tuesday, July 21, 2015 - link
Any idea what those ridicluously large caps on the PCB are for? I would hope for better unexpected power failure recovery -- but didn't see anything in the article touting that as a feature.extide - Tuesday, July 21, 2015 - link
Yes that's what they are for, it mentions it on the first page.Flunk - Tuesday, July 21, 2015 - link
Your conclusion is based on the manufacturer's reported reliability rating, but you never tested it. Who's to say if this drive actually is more durable than it's competition? Or even a cheap consumer drive?I know that testing this would be impractical, but it's difficult to judge hardware based solely on the manufacturer's claims.