DenBen April 20, 2025, 1:01 p.m.

Help deciding best ssd for database server - small business upgrade

Hey folks! Our small business is upgrading our inventory management system and need to ditch our ancient spinning hard drives. Running PostgreSQL with around 800GB total data that's growing about 20% yearly.

Current setup is struggling with performance as we've grown (20+ concurrent users at peak). Our primary database server is a Dell PowerEdge R740 with plenty of RAM (128GB) but the storage is bottlenecking us badly during heavy reports and monthly inventory processing.

Looking for SSD recommendations that balance reliability, performance, and cost. This needs to handle heavy write operations with lots of small transactions. Initial thought was enterprise NVMe, but prices are eye-watering and not sure if we'd see enough performance gain to justify cost.

Would consumer-grade SSDs be suicide for this workload? Mixed workload enterprise SATA? We do have hourly backups plus standby replication, so while downtime hurts, data loss isn't catastrophic.

IT budget isn't tiny but also not enterprise-level. Any real-world experience with database workloads appreciated!

Ju112233 April 20, 2025, 4:47 p.m.

RIP inbox lol. U just started holy war between enterprise IT and homelab crowd. grabs popcorn

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tom soyer April 20, 2025, 8:04 p.m.

$$$$ SSDs are a SCAM. I've run 5 e-commerce sites (22TB data) on regular samsung evos for 4+ YEARS. Not a single failure. "Enterprise" drives = paying 3x for same components with fancy firmware + logo. Database performance is about I/O PATTERNS not magic enterprise pixie dust

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Nfnf April 20, 2025, 11:39 p.m.

oh look another "IT professional" who doesn't understand endurance ratings or sustained workload performance 🙄 servers aren't gaming rigs buddy

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rvv2013 April 21, 2025, 10:01 a.m.

Bro nobody mentioning RAID setup??? RAID0 = dead business when drive fails. RAID10 minimum for ANY production DB. Drive type matters less than redundancy configuration wtf

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tkv April 21, 2025, 11:30 p.m.

Who even suggested RAID0?? Literally nobody said that. Typical forum making up arguments to sound smart 🤦‍♂️

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FreeRegister April 22, 2025, 1:44 a.m.

Why are you asking GG for business advice?? This is like asking teenagers for marriage counseling. your businesses data deserves actual enterprise support not gg guesses. call dell direct and get proper solution with SLA

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nameless_0ne April 22, 2025, 9:12 p.m.

lmaooo everyone recommending $$$$$ drives when WD Red SA500 SSD exists. Running 6 of these bad boys for last 14mo with zero hiccups. Perfect middle ground between "gamer" and "enterprise" drives. Dude at microcenter literally called them "small business sweet spot"

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max100 April 23, 2025, 12:13 a.m.

r u monitoring ACTUAL io patterns or just assuming storage bottleneck? iostat/iotop during peak usage before buying anything. 90% of "slow databases" = garbage queries not hardware limitations. post EXPLAIN ANALYZE of slow queries before buying drives plz

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clasic-j April 23, 2025, 10:32 p.m.

No mentions of write amplification factor yet??? Postgresql doing constant small writes = WAF nightmare on consumer tlc drives. Critical spec everyone ignores until drives die prematurely. This is literally why enterprise drives exist guys

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COLOOB April 25, 2025, 8:26 p.m.

Yall making this so complicated lmao. Throw fastest nvme u can afford in there, properly configure postgresql (raise shared_buffers, work_mem, effective_cache_size). Boom done. Next question?

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333666 April 29, 2025, 7:15 p.m.

OK actual database admin perspective after 17 years: Kingston Data Centre DC500R + tune postgresql.conf (checkpoint_timeout, max_wal_size) = probably all you need. Dont overthink it. Enterprise drives exist because enterprises can't tolerate risk small businesses accept daily

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reloser May 4, 2025, 2:27 p.m.

Anyone telling you consumer drives "fine for production" never lost a weekend restoring from backups while business hemorrhaging money. Ask me how I know 🙃

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R.N.N. May 7, 2025, 12:26 a.m.

This. Lost a client's ENTIRE reservation system during valentine's day weekend (restaurant). 17 hours downtime, $30k+ revenue loss, all to "save" $400 on proper drives. Absolute nightmare that still haunts me. Sometimes cheaper = catastrophically expensive

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adida$ May 9, 2025, 4:17 p.m.

dell r740??? bro that server costs more than ALL the ssds you could fill it with!! why cheap out now after spending on serious server??

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