Does SSD storage make all websites faster?

[Wambo]

I was talking with a friend on Skype who mentioned he was going to get a Linode server for a project he was working on because it had SSD storage. Linode is great but I argued he could save money and get a cheaper regular VPS because his site will have little/no traffic at first while he works on it and that SSD won't be beneficial unless he already has a lot of traffic and a heavy database. He said that SSD will make all sites faster.

Assuming everything was exactly the same (same server, same OS, same configuration and webserver) would there actually be any difference in speed for a low traffic site? I Thought SSDs were useful only if hitting a bottleneck caused by already having an active site with lots of database requests.

 

[GIANT_CRAB]

It certainly offers faster speed for his database and therefore, slightly insignificant faster loading speed if he retrieves data from the database. However, just like RAID10 and other cloud bs, SSD is more a marketing gimmick these days and it certainly seems like this dear friend of yours fell for it.

To make the website load faster, it's mainly about the network and the content. If your content is mostly images that are like 50MB, heck, everyone can tell you straight away that the site will be slow as hell. If your content is offer through CDN, it will be faster for everyone to load your site.

>Linode is great but I argued he could save money and get a cheaper regular VPS because his site will have little/no traffic at first while he works on it and that SSD won't be beneficial unless he already has a lot of traffic and a heavy database.

If he doesn't take this advice of yours, he's just wasting money.

 

[serverian]

Forget caching for a moment.

People using SSD for marketing doesn't make it useless. A 7200 RPM HDD can only have 150 IOPS tops. A modern SSD has at least 10K non inflated/non bullshit/non cached IOPS.

On a HDD server, your VPS will race with all other VPS's to process its I/O actions. On SSD servers, the IO wouldn't be a bottleneck in most cases.

Less waiting for IO = faster processing.

When you put caching and CDN in this equation, if the website doesn't depend heavily on the database, it'd be hard to notice the difference.

Also note that, it's very easy for one VPS to eat all that precious I/O cycles on a HDD server, thus makes the initial processing before caching slower for others. If your VPS has I/O hungry neighbours, you'll suffer on HDD servers. This is still possible on SSD servers, but it's very less likely.

 

[comXyz]

Yes, of course. It makes everything running on it faster.

 

[ModyDev]

SSD makes db driven websites load much faster for example [ forums , blogs , shopping carts ]

 

[Criot]

It can certainly increase speed but on something like a website in development, there wouldn't be a significant difference in speed. SSD is certainly beneficial for websites that heavily read from their databases (such as forums), but static websites would be better off with a CDN in most cases.

 

[tonyg]

Yes, all SSDs makes all websites faster all the time.

 

[devonblzx]

No.  Only if you're exceeding the IOPS of your previous disk setup.  If you only use a few IOPS, then you won't notice a difference between a SATA and SSD setup.  If you're running a database intensive site, like WebHostingTalk for instance, that probably uses a few thousand IOPS then the SSD setup will be noticeably faster than a SATA setup.

The idea that a faster server makes a web site faster is false.   A faster setup only improves your web site if there is a bottleneck to begin with.

Edit:  I should also add the details about memory.  If you have a small database or certain parts that are consistently read, then most of the reads should be from memory (cache) and the disk setup won't matter at all. 

If you have a large database with lots of inconsistent reads then an SSD can help because of its access time.   But keep in mind, an SATA can still transfer ~100MB/s, which saturates a gigabit port, and has an access time of ~10ms.  Therefore, for small usage (a few reads and writes) or sequential access, you aren't going to notice any slow downs from an SATA.

 

[kunnu]

I am using SSD on my PC because of OS load time is only 4 to 6 second and copy/paste, program startup time is really fast so I think using a SSD on server will increase OS reboot time, copy/paste speed, etc..

 

[drmike]

SSDs are not a fix to bad coding, lack of RAM, poor configurations, etc.   It can and will help on fresh, mostly empty drives though.

Optimization should be done to your site / web projects first.  Proper database indexes, table design, etc.  Tune queries - get a DBA for an hour or two to do what you can't.

I run SSDs myself in two places:

1. System boot drive(s)

2. MySQL / static file pile

But I do that where I have a good chunk of RAM and headspace between use and RAM in box.  You start smacking RAM limits, paging to disk - SSD / swapping then performance is going to suck.  Sure it will suck less.

 

[securewebcloud]

Yes. SSD Drives are the standard for production corporate web servers but not required. As for speed SSD wins hands down because it uses flash drive technology. HDDs have spinning parts which makes them less reliable over time in comparison but much more cost efficient to run. As drmike stated RAM will play the most part in speed and response time of your servers.

I always make sure to have at least 1GB RAM available just for the system, apache, and database which will depend on lots of disk I/O's to serve dynamic webpages quickly.  check this text on PCmag http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2404258,00.asp

 

[TierNet]

SDD offer up to 100 times greater performance, almost instantaneous data access, quicker boot ups, faster file transfers and fast data response time. All these features definitely improve your website response time as compared to traditional Drives.

 

[Jeffrey]

SSD provides faster write times over traditional hard drives, so theoretically, yes, SSD will allow websites to load faster on that server AS LONG as that server is correctly optimized for that hardware.

 

[HBAndrei]

On low traffic sites that are quite simple coded and easy on the database, the performance difference can sometimes be unnoticeable.

BUT, you've got to consider you're not alone on that server, so even though your site barely gets any traffic that doesn't mean the server's HDDs aren't being maxed out by other clients.

That being said, I for one don't see any reason not to opt for SSD to begin with, providers such as Linode, DO, Vultr have already low prices on their SSD VPS's, and you know for a fact they're quite reliable as opposed to going for a HDD VPS from a LET provider just to save those 2-5 bucks per month.

Especially since you've mentioned it's a low traffic site, it means you can easily go for Linode's lowest VPS (all though I'd suggest DigitalOcean) since the site doesn't require high resources to begin with.