DapuStor H3201 E1.S SSD

The Dapustor Haishen3 H3200 is a power-efficient NVMe SSD meant for a range of different applications. Today, we will be looking at the ruler (E1.S) iteration of the H3200 line (specifically labeled as H3201), which comes in two capacities featuring 112-layer KIOXIA 3D enterprise NAND and a Marvell controller. We previously reviewed the DapuStor H3200—the U.2 form factor model. While the U.2 form factor is meant more for heavy use like in data centers, video surveillance, and edge computing, the E1.S version is designed mainly to give hyper scalers some flexibility regarding performance and density, all inside a tiny (i.e., just a little larger than an M.2 drive) form factor.

DapuStor H3201

As far as its physical footprint goes, the benefits of E1.S are substantial. With the U.2 version of the H3200, you can really only fit 10-12 of them inside a 1U server chassis (without having to use midplanes or other time-consuming methods). With the H3200 E1.S, you can fit 24 front-mounted drives in the same 1U system, all of which are hot-swappable with enterprise-grade features. This is hugely important for both OEM and hyperscale. As a result, the E1.S model will allow organizations to create a significantly denser 1U server.

The DapuStor H3201 is highlighted by security features, such as end-to-end data protection on both Firmware and hardware path, including DDR ECC, LDPC, power loss protection. Performance-wise, the 3.84TB DapuStor H3201 is quoted to reach sequential speeds up to 3,400MB/s read and 2,500MB/s write, while random 4k performance is expected to hit as high as 720,000 IOPS read and 105,000 IOPS write.

For reliability, the H3201 features an endurance rating of 1 DWPD. DapuStor offers another E1.S model at a 3.2TB capacity point, dubbed the “H3101”. This version is the higher-endurance model, which offers better random write performance (220K IOPS) and a much longer lifespan at 3 drive writes per day.

All models from the DapuStor H3200 line are backed by a 5-year warranty.

DapuStor H3201 E1.S Specifications

DapuStor H3201 E1.S Performance

Testbed

Our PCIe Gen4 Enterprise SSD reviews leverage a Lenovo ThinkSystem SR635 for application tests and synthetic benchmarks. The ThinkSystem SR635 is a well-equipped single-CPU AMD platform, offering CPU power well in excess of what’s needed to stress high-performance local storage. It is also the only platform in our lab (and one of the few on the market currently) with PCIe Gen4 U.2 bays. Synthetic tests don’t require a lot of CPU resources but still leverage the same Lenovo platform. In both cases, the intent is to showcase local storage in the best light possible that aligns with storage vendor maximum drive specs.

Testing Background and Comparables

The StorageReview Enterprise Test Lab provides a flexible architecture for conducting benchmarks of enterprise storage devices in an environment comparable to what administrators encounter in real deployments. The Enterprise Test Lab incorporates a variety of servers, networking, power conditioning, and other network infrastructure that allows our staff to establish real-world conditions to accurately gauge performance during our reviews.

We incorporate these details about the lab environment and protocols into reviews so that IT professionals and those responsible for storage acquisition can understand the conditions under which we have achieved the following results. None of our reviews are paid for or overseen by the manufacturer of equipment we are testing. Additional details about the StorageReview Enterprise Test Lab and an overview of its networking capabilities are available on those respective pages.

Application Workload Analysis

In order to understand the performance characteristics of enterprise storage devices, it is essential to model the infrastructure and the application workloads found in live-production environments. Our benchmarks for the DapuStor H3200 are therefore the MySQL OLTP performance via SysBench and Microsoft SQL Server OLTP performance with a simulated TCP-C workload. For our application workloads, each drive will be running 2-4 identically configured VMs.

SQL Server Performance

Each SQL Server VM is configured with two vDisks: 100GB volume for boot and a 500GB volume for the database and log files. From a system-resource perspective, we configured each VM with 16 vCPUs, 64GB of DRAM and leveraged the LSI Logic SAS SCSI controller. While our Sysbench workloads tested previously saturated the platform in both storage I/O and capacity, the SQL test is looking for latency performance.

This test uses SQL Server 2014 running on Windows Server 2012 R2 guest VMs, and is stressed by Quest’s Benchmark Factory for Databases. StorageReview’s Microsoft SQL Server OLTP testing protocol employs the current draft of the Transaction Processing Performance Council’s Benchmark C (TPC-C), an online transaction-processing benchmark that simulates the activities found in complex application environments. The TPC-C benchmark comes closer than synthetic performance benchmarks to gauging the performance strengths and bottlenecks of storage infrastructure in database environments. Each instance of our SQL Server VM for this review uses a 333GB (1,500 scale) SQL Server database and measures the transactional performance and latency under a load of 15,000 virtual users.

SQL Server Testing Configuration (per VM)

• Windows Server 2012 R2
• Storage Footprint: 600GB allocated, 500GB used

• SQL Server 2014

• • Database Size: 1,500 scale
  • Virtual Client Load: 15,000
  • RAM Buffer: 48GB

• Test Length: 3 hours

• • 2.5 hours preconditioning
  • 30 minutes sample period

For our SQL Server transactional benchmark, the DapuStor H3201 E1.S had an average score of 12,650 TPS at 4VMs, which was a solid score. The U.2 version had an average of 12,646 TPS.