Best m.2 drive for multiple VM users?

[SB118]

Setting up an unraid gaming box (3 users), Looking for a drive that can handle being accessed by 2-3 concurrent users (example, all loading the same game at the same time, etc)
I'm aiming for each VM to feel like it has it's own sata ssd, getting each machine to handle like it's own nvme would push me up to a threadripper setup and the bank can't handle that right now (although i can survive with only one kidney, so the option is there)

I currently have a 500gb 970 evo & 500gb WD blue, both m.2 I've seen that some of the cheaper nvme don't handle constant large file transfer (Intel) due to cache size but this is only going to be a game storage device (maybe a separate partition to store our Peppa Pig collection for when Virgin Media has a sulk).

I can run the 970evo as an OS drive, just looking for advice as to if one drive is better than another to handle multiple access.

Thanks

 

[lumencreative]

If you’re running vms you should really consider the evo pro at the very least as vms will give the drive quite a beating.

 

[EsaT]

If lots of constant writes are involved, then MLC drive is of course best.
TLC drives simply can't match continuous write speed of MLC drives, except when writing into SLC cache. After that's filled write speeds fall to ~1GB/s class.
Though MLC drives are crazy expensive, even more than already crazy Samsung prices.
So if load is mostly reads, then TLC is lot more sensible.

Intel 660p is slow because of using pretty much analog crap called QLC, whose unbuffered write speed struggles against 10 year old HDDs.
(Samsung 860 QVO is also QLC drive and has miserable 80MB/s write speed without cache)

SM2262 based Adata SX8200 Pro is optimized more for lighter use peak performance/reads and write performance is based on agressive use of empty space as SLC cache.

Phison E12 controller doesn't have as high peak performance and uses smallish static SLC cache.
But it's optimized for continous load performance and can write that 1GB/s up to full drive without falling into slower "folding" speed caused by need to start flushing big dynamic SLC caches.
(also most Phison E12 drives have over doubled write endurance specification)
Corsair MP510 and PNY CS3030 are some of the higher specced Phison E12 drives.
There are also plenty of other drives based on Phison E12.

For read performance they can all easily match multiple SATA drives in sequential reads.
In random reads there again isn't that huge differences.

 

[Avalon]

It’s all relative to your workload, loading games and general desktop usage for example is read based, you’ll be limited to gigabit presumably, so that’s 100MB/s per client, your average AHCI based SSD is potentially capable of 5x that.

The blanket statement about write endurance needs to be prefaced with a caveat - I own SLC and MLC drives with write endurance below QLC levels. QLC is geared towards a general desktop usage profile, the majority of people will never, ever have a usage scenario that would result in a slowdown, how often do most people write 280GB in one hit? That’s not a normal usage pattern for most people.