How to tell if a hosting is really using SSD for their services?

[jensen]

Is there a method we can use to check if a said hosting is really using SSD or if it was just pure marketing?
Some claim cloud hosting as SSD. Some claim virtual disks running as SSD. So how do we tell for sure that a particular hosting service provider is using SSD?

 

[mduffyx1]

I'm not sure how you can tell. But I am curious to know why you consider the use of SSD to be important. For sure, it will be a heavy factor for performance on a local system. But on a system far away, total throughput will depend a lot on the performance of intermediate nodes.

 

[jensen]

On my laptop, the difference was very significant between HDD to SSD
So when they say "our hosting uses SSD harddisk instead of the 15K SAS or SATA harddisk." there must be a difference measurable. They advertise that the SSD is 5400 IOPS vs 400 IOPS on the SATA. more than 10 times faster. I was sold on that idea.
But mduffyx1 made an important point - "the performance of the intermediate nodes" so having SSD's speed may not be so evident.

Did some comparisons like upgrading Wordpress on a SSD host vs on a HDD host and thought I saw very significant responses. Tried comparing the responsiveness like adding plug-ins and installing programs, significant difference was noted. compared a few different host and thought the responsiveness was significant on the SSD. But then I met one host that claimed to be running SSD and the response time was significantly slower than the other hosts. So the question arises if there is a method to detect the difference.

Had some "silly" replies in other forums - "IF YOU DON"T TRUST YOUR HOST, then why host with them???"
It does not answer the question. But with mduffy1's reply it's making me think about the intermediate nodes.

Advertising on hosting "We choose to provide you with the best hosting platform as possible. Our servers run dual Nehalem Quad Core CPU’s, 24GB+ ECC3 RAM, SSD Harddrives, and more… We could keep going but we don’t want to give away to much of the magic."

If no one can verify then anyone can just claim about anything?

 

[mduffyx1]

It it were a paid host, there would probably be performance guarantees. But I'm not sure even then how to objectively evaluate throughput. They might be able to guarantee response / throughput rates for their own internet connection, but again, between that point and your test system there might be inconsistent latency and speed throttling that depend on vagaries of utilisation by everyone and his dog who end up in the same pipe at the time you perform the test.

 

[reptille]

and any way as he said it really wouldn't effect us we are too far down the line for it to matter