Marius,

> anyone tested firebird on ssd devices ?

Nope, I am waiting for a reasonably priced *enterprise* level SSD to
become available. But it will happen soon.

> sequential read speeds of up to 170MB/sec., and write speeds of up to
> 130MB/sec. vs an normal drive ~ 70MB/sec

There are several things you need to keep in mind when looking at these
numbers:

1 - MB/sec performance values are *hugely* influenced by the size of the
data blocks being read/written -- block sizes of 4KB vs. 1MB!

2 - database perform *random* read and write operations, so sequential
operations really don't matter for databases. Interestingly the
SuperTalent site doesn't provide performance numbers for Random IO
operations.

If we use the new Intel X25-E drive specs as a 'straw man', it has the
following specs:

- Sequential Reads up to 250 MB/s
- Sequential Writes up to 170 MB/s

Admittedly very good numbers!

However, if we look at their Random IO specs, we have:

- Random 4KB reads: 35,000 IOPS ==> 140 MB/s
- Random 4KB writes: 3,000 IOPS ==> 13 MB/s <----!!!!!

So, you can see than Random IOs are "the true test" of an SSD -- they
give a much more realistic "real world" values.

Don't get me wrong, SSDs are the future and are getting better everyday.


Sean

P.S. IOPS = IO Per Second