corsair

Corsair XMS3 RAM compatible with HP Microserver N40L

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Just a quick post today on RAM compatibility with the good old trusty home lab server, the HP Proliant N40L Microserver. I am currently using Microservers for my home vSphere 5 lab, running ESXi 5.0 update 1.

 

I had 8GB of Corsair XMS3 PC3-12800 C9 (1600MHz) RAM lying around at home and wanted to put it back to good use. It does not have ECC, but I tried it out in my Microserver and it works! Despite being a higher voltage rated RAM kit (1.65v odd), it works with the Microserver’s 1.5 rated DIMM slots just fine. No need to buy an extra 8GB RAM kit with my second Microserver now.

 

 

Benchmarking – Corsair Reactor R60 SSD vs conventional HDs

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So the other day was my first venture into the world of Solid State Storage. I purchased a Corsair Reactor R60. Not the best of SSDs, in fact it is more on the budget side when it comes to SSD storage. It uses a JMicron JMF612 controller and support TRIM provided your OS such as Windows 7 does. The drive was however good value for money in terms of size and performance. Here is a rundown of some of the features straight from Corsair’s site.

  • Maximum sequential read speed 250MB/s
  • Maximum sequential write speed 170MB/s
  • Latest generation JMicron JMF612 controller and MLC NAND flash for fast performance.
  • 128MB DRAM cache for stutter-free performance
  • Internal SATA II connectivity
  • USB 2.0 connectivity for disk cloning or for use as external drive
  • TRIM support (O/S support required)
  • No moving parts for increased durability and reliability and quieter operations over standard hard disk drives
  • Decreased power usage for increased notebook or netbook battery life

I had a clean installation of Windows on my previous OS drive, so I decided it would be a good time to benchmark the SSD against this. I also got hold of some results using the exact same benchmark and scenario but using 8 x Velociraptor 300GB SATA Drives in RAID 60 on a dedicated Areca RAID card. Here are the results. I have used IOmeter for the benchmarking, using a Transfer Request size of 4KB. The results are taken from the Command Queue Depth of 4 results in each instance.

I must say that I am extremely impressed with this SSD. Even for budget / mid range drive, it is phenomenally fast when comparing it to conventional HD storage. Windows loads much quicker and so do the games that I have installed on it. Everything snaps open as the drive is able to access any area of storage almost instantly. File copying performance is also extremely impressive. Even when comparing to a high end RAID controller with multiple high speed Velociraptor drives spinning at 15000rpm in RAID, this drive pulls ahead in all benchmarks. As a dedicated OS / Application drive, I would definitely recommend one.

Next up, I think I am going to try this drive out as dedicated VM storage drive and see how VMDKs perform on it!