5100 MAX 960GB – Saturated IOPS Performance – 4KB, 8KB Random, 128K Sequential

I'm carrying over the IOPS vs. % Read charts from my P3608 review. The former IOPS vs. Latency plots also used in that review has been superseded by the far superior Percentile method (on the next page). With sweeps of R/W in 10% increments and all Queue Depths covered, there's a lot of data on each chart, so here I have listed the charts sequentially but matched the scales of each pair for easier A/B comparison.

Note that since we are plotting a Read/Write percentage spread, we no longer need to include other specific workloads (OLTP, Database, etc), as those workloads are included as a part of the below charts. For reference, here is the IO distribution of typical purpose-specific workloads:

  • Database / OLTP: 8KB 67/33 (or 70/30)
  • Email Server: 8KB 50/50
  • File Server: 80/20 of the following:
    • 10% 512B, 5% 1KB, 5% 2KB *
    • 60% 4KB, 2% 8KB, 4% 16KB, 4% 32KB, 10% 64KB
  • Web Server: 100/0 (read only) of the following:
    • 22% 512B, 15% 1KB, 8% 2KB *
    • 23% 4KB, 15% 8KB, 2% 16KB, 6% 32KB, 7% 64KB, 1% 128KB, 1% 512KB

* We have discontinued the File Server and Web Server tests currently used by many other sites, as they employ legacy workloads that are 16 years old (yes, in the year 2000) and are simply no longer representative of modern technology. Specifically, modern enterprise SSDs are no longer optimized for <4KB random, yet the outdated Web Server workload applies nearly half (45%) of its workload at those 'wrong' sizes. While it makes for an interesting spread in the results showing artificial penalties with SSDs optimized for 4KB, those results are just no longer meaningful in modern day enterprise use.

Before diving into the results, here are Micron's stated specs:

Specs will be marked on these charts with an 'X' in the color corresponding to the appropriate QD for that test (32 for Micron SATA in this case).

4KB Random

For 4KB random, the MAX exceeded all claimed specs, some by a fair margin. Those random write figures are killer!

8KB Random

Micron did not rate these parts at 8KB random, but I've included our results for those curious.

128KB Sequential

QD=32 specs are X'd on the chart below.

Again, performance met the spec, but we are essentially saturating SATA here, so no surprises.

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