jskrewson - 6:55 pm on Jan 1, 2011 (gmt 0)

Typically how big are these files you unzip and scan?

They are generally fairly large, so it takes awhile to unzip. All together its more than a terrabyte of uncompressed data. I should mention that I don't write the raw uncompressed data to disk and I process the data in chunks.

Are the SSDs strictly for temporary file scanning, not permanent storage?

I can't afford SSD permanent storage yet. The 64GB max size requires a 2U or larger box and a large number of drives. That's why I mentioned the next gen Intel enterprise SSD's. I'll probably go RAID 10 with 4x400GB SSD when they come out.

I do upgrade my backend hardware every year and because I lease, I don't care about SSD failures, although the X25-E's have been pretty reliable. My front end servers have been running the same SSD's for 1.5 years. I'd say I write about 90GB a day to them, not counting OS related writes.