One thing to note is that a VAR (as mentioned elsewhere) will knock 75% off the price listed on Dell’s website.
Another this is that that is way too cheap for those SSDs. Enterprise SAS (not plain SATA) SSDs are a lot more than $310. Our 7.68TB drives are about $2k each, but worth it if they stay problem free.
Even on Newegg, SAS SSD of that size are $900-2000, so add warranty and service on top of that.
Makes sense.
> Another this is that that is way too cheap for those SSDs. Enterprise SAS (not plain SATA) SSDs are a lot more than $310. Our 7.68TB drives are about $2k each, but worth it if they stay problem free.
I was able to find these two enterprise-grade NVMe SSDs on Newegg:
https://www.newegg.com/p/2U3-0005-000J8 ($474, 7.68 TB, 1 DWPD)
https://www.newegg.com/p/2U3-000S-000Y8 ($360, 6.4 TB, 3 DWPD)
This is something more similar to what is in those Dell servers (and there are 24 of them):
https://www.newegg.com/samsung-pm1643a-7-68tb/p/2U3-0005-000...
https://www.newegg.com/p/0N7-0133-00003
There is certainly a markup with Dell, but it’s sort of like a cloud vendor - pay for the warranty and service, and be (somewhat) hands off if something breaks.
My personal workstation at the side of my desk has 6 pcie nvme ssd's and I can add 4 more without breaking the lane bank.
that's the one of points of article: Epic cpus have 128 lanes for a while, and that's how they upgraded to 24 NVMEs.
I don't know all the ins and outs of SAS vs NVMe. Maybe someone else can chime in. I am at the end of my knowledge now.
I suppose one benefit is the availability of hardware RAID controllers, as hinted in the article. But it does seem interesting that NVMe is cheaper than SAS, while theoretically having higher bandwidth.
> Makes sense.
Does it? Adding a middleman that needs to take a cut to exist reducing the price makes sense to you?