Btrfs On 4 x Intel SSDs In RAID 0/1/5/6/10
Earlier this month I published Btrfs RAID benchmarks on two HDDs but as some more interesting results are now Btrfs RAID file-system benchmarks when testing the next-generation Linux file-system across four Intel Series 530 solid-state drives. All RAID levels supported by the Btrfs file-system were benchmarked atop Ubuntu 14.10 with the Linux 3.18-rc1 kernel: RAID 0, 1, 5, 6, and 10 levels along with testing a Btrfs single SSD setup and a Btrfs file-system linearly spanning all four drives.
These results are much more interesting than the earlier two-disk HDD benchmarks now using solid-state storage and having bought four Intel Series 530 120GB SSDs for making this an interesting RAID comparison. Four of the Intel SSDSC2BW120A4K5 solid-state drives were used in their 120GB capacity. Each of these solid-state drives retail for $75~80 USD and features sequential reads up to 540MB/s and sequential writes up to 480MB/s with its Serial ATA 3.0 interface. The 2.5-inch SSD 530 Series drive is rated by a five-year warranty and uses 20nm Intel NAND MLC memory.
The four Intel SSDSC2BW120A4K5 SSDs cost just shy of $300 USD for being able to stress all of the Btrfs standard RAID levels. Tested were RAID 0, 1, 5, 6, and 10 (1+0) levels using btrfs-tools as packaged on Ubuntu 14.10 while having upgraded to the Linux 3.18-rc1 kernel for the latest file-system code. Beyond testing the RAID levels, a single Intel SSD was tested with Btrfs and then also all four SSDs when the Btrfs file-system was just setup to span all four drives (mirrored meta-data with linear data allocation).
Btrfs tools makes setting up RAID arrays incredibly easy and versatile. If you're not familiar with the built-in RAID support for Btrfs, see the Btrfs Wiki for its great information. If you're not familiar with the standard RAID levels in general, stop by Wikipedia. The RAID 5/6 support for Btrfs is still considered experimental but in my benchmarking thus far it's been running great and haven't encountered any troubles to this point.