Site speed is an essential ingredient required in maintaining a healthy user experience as well as good search engine rankings.
Users will not stick around forever waiting for web pages to load. If your site is slow, they could simply leave to a competitor resulting in a loss of business as well as a loss of search engine rankings.
NVMe drives are many times faster than traditional hard drives and SSDs. NVMe servers can help speed up your site.
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Website Speed Is Crucial To Stay Competitive
A slow website could turn visitors away and land them on your competitor’s door (site) seeking the same product or service from them, that they were previously seeking from you. It will drive visitors away and ultimately hurt your overall reputation. To back these claims, we have provided research done by experts like Google.
We hope you find the information in this blog post useful. If needed, our NVMe VPS can increase your site speed by a great deal. Most clients that try us or switch to us are truly amazed at our performance and remain with us as long time clients! Ready? Give us a try.
What Google Says About Site Speed?
The following snippet has been taken from the Google Search Central Blog
Through both internal studies and industry research, users show they prefer sites with a great page experience. In recent years, Search has added a variety of user experience criteria, such as how quickly pages load and mobile-friendliness, as factors for ranking results.
In essence, what Google is saying is that, in their eyes and backed by research, a website’s speed is a vital component of user experience, and page loading time has been added as a ranking factor into Google Search. As a practical example, notice how fast Google Search and the pages across the Google network load! Those ultra-fast Google page loads contribute alot to the positive experience users enjoy while visiting Google sites.
According to Google Consumer Insights,
Portent’s Research on Site Speed
A research on site speed and conversion rate on B2C e-commerce sites conducted by the marketing company Portent found that:
When pages load in 1 second, the average conversion rate is almost 40%. At a 2-second load time, the conversion rate already drops to 34%. At 3 seconds, the conversion rate begins to level off at 29% and reaches its lowest at a 6-second load time. At anything above a 5-second page load time, you’re talking about roughly half the conversion rate of a fast website.
These studies and reports validate the point that a site’s performance greatly impacts its user experience, which we know impacts search engine rankings because Google has explicitly said so. The research above strongly suggests that a fast site is needed for any kind of business or meaningful user engagement.
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Introducing NVMe – The Modern Solution
NVMe is a rapidly adopted protocol which accelerates Input/Output (I/O) speed. It uses the PCIe (Peripheral Component Interconnect Express) interface unlike the commonly used SATA which uses AHCI (Advanced Host Controller Interface).
SATA III, which is the latest revision of SATA can transfer data at max speeds of 6Gbps, while in practice it mostly caps at around 600 MB/s to account for overhead. NVMe can transfer data many times faster than this, bringing I/O bottleneck down to a bare minimum, resulting in faster servers and faster websites or apps hosted on those servers.
The NVMe technology of today took time to evolve into the state it is currently in and was collaborated by many big industry players.
History of NVMe Technology:
- 2008: A group of major IT companies formed a consortium to create NVMe.
- 2012: The specifications for NVMe 1.1 were released on Nov-08-2012.
- 2014: The NVM Express Work Group became the NVM Express organization.
- 2016: NVMe-oF 1.0 was released.
- 2019: NVMe 1.4 was launched.
- 2020: The Zoned Namespaces (ZNS) Command Set was confirmed.
- 2021: NVMe 2.0 was released.
- 2022: The NVMe 2.0 specifications were updated in January as 2.0b and in October as 2.0c.
The Difference: NVMe vs Traditional Storage:
To understand the evolution of NVMe, it is important to know the difference between Traditional Storage Solutions and NVMe.
1. Hard Disk Drives:
- How It Works: Data is stored on spinning magnetic disks called platters. A mechanical arm reads and writes data by moving across the disks. The spinning speed is usually 5400 to 7200 RPM.
- Interface Used: SATA (Serial ATA) and SAS (Serial Attached SCSI). They use the AHCI and SCSI protocols.
- Speed: Slow compared to SSD Drives. The average speed is around 80-160 MB/s which is limited due to the spinning movement.
- Durability: Least durable, movement and spinning increase the chance of data corruption. Traditional HDDs are also sensitive to vibration and shock which increases when they are in motion.
- Storage Capacity: Highest capacity, up to 32TB in 2024. Traditional drives are generally more affordable per GB making them the logical choice for bulk storage and big data.
- Price: Lowest among all drive types.
2. Solid State Drives (SSDs):
- How It Works: Data is stored in flash memory without any moving parts, unlike platters as in traditional hard drives.
- Interface Used: SATA and SAS which use the same AHCI and SCSI protocols.
- Speed: SSDs are faster than traditional HDDs with speeds of up to 500-600 MB/s.
- Durability: SSDs are more durable than traditional hard drives due to no moving parts. They are also less sensitive to vibration and shock.
- Storage Capacity: Various sizes available. Highest capacity, 100TB but very expensive ($40,000).
- Price: Mid-range price, more expensive than hard drives, however prices have been coming down and are expected to decline.
3. NVMe (Non-Volatile Memory Express) SSDs:
- How It Works: Data is stored in NVMe drives, the same way it is stored in SSDs, which is in flash memory. The difference lies in the interface which has the task of transferring data from the drive to the computer or server. NVMe SSDs use the PCIe interface and NVMe protocol which allows much faster data transfer than any other drive type.
- Interface: PCI Express
- Speed: The fastest. Up to 7000 MB per second (Mbps). Many times the speed of a SATA SSD, depending on the PCIe generation.
- Durability: Similar to SSDs but they run hotter than SSDs. Many NVMe SSDs are equipped with heat sinks or spreaders to dissipate heat. Under prolonged heavy loads without heat management, they can wear out faster than SSDs.
- Storage Capacity: Various sizes available. Highest capacity is 64TB, SOLIDIGM 61.44TB.
- Price: Generally more expensive than Solid State Drives (SSDs).
Drive Comparison Table
| HDD | SSD | NVMe SSD | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Speed | 80 – 160 MB/s | 500 – 600 MB/s | 3,000 – 7,000 MB/s |
| Durability | Low (moving parts) | High (no moving parts) | High (no moving parts) |
| Life Span | 3 – 5 years | 5 – 10 years | Up to 10 years |
| Cost | Low | Mid-range | High |
| Capacity | Up to 32TB | Up to 100TB | Up to 61.44TB |
| Usage | Bulk storage, Backups, Data Center, NAS, Servers, Surveillance, Budget Web Servers | Laptop and Desktops, Server OS, Database Servers, Content Delivery, Web Hosting, Virtualization, Applications | Caching, High End Design, HPC, Gaming, Analytics, Forex Apps, Enterprise Hosting and Virtualization |
Which Drive Type To Choose?
HDD
Traditional hard drives could be a good choice if:
- Your budget is low
- You need lots of storage
- Speed is not essential
- You are archiving data
- You don’t mind a little bit of noise from the drive
- You are OK with the drive being a little bulky
- An energy efficient drive is not a concern
Solid State Drives (SSD)
You should consider SSDs if:
- Speed is essential
- You want a silent drive
- You want a drive that is lightweight and small
- You want a drive that is energy efficient
- A longer lasting drive is needed
Non-Volatile Memory Express (NVMe) SSD:
NVMe drives would be a good match if:
- The need for speed is paramount
- You want the latest drive technology
- You want lag free gaming
- You are involved in activities which require real time data access like currency exchange or trading
- Your application or software needs to process data quickly
- You want to virtualize and create high performance virtual servers
NVMe Drives Are More Power Efficient
NVMe SSDs consume more power than SSDs during all phases of operation such as idle, active and peak operations. This is due to their using the PCIe interface and thermal management if they have heat sinks.
But when compared to SSDs, NVMe drives consume less power in relation to the data that they transfer. While they only consume slightly more power than SSDs, since they transfer data many times faster, the amount of data transferred for the power NVMe drives consume is much higher than traditional hard drives and SSDs, making them super efficient in scenarios where there is large amounts of data being transferred.
This efficient power use is beneficial where there is alot of data being transferred such as in data centers, data analytics and databases.
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How NVMe Increases Speed
Uses PCIe Interface
NVMe uses the Peripheral Component Interconnect Express (PCIe) interface which is an enhancement over the older legacy PCI interfaces where computers came with PCI slots. These newer PCIe interfaces permit direct communication with the CPU via dedicated serial channels referred to as lanes. Common configurations are x1, x4, x8 and x16, where the number after the ‘x’ denotes the number of lanes. Each lane is full duplex with bidirectional circuitry enabling independent travel to and from the processor. Modern computers and servers are equipped with multiple PCIe slots allowing for expansion and the addition of various components such as NVMe drives, GPUs and NIC cards.
PCIe Generations
Since it’s debut in 2003, the PCIe Interface has gone many revisions, with each revision or Generation doubling the speed of its previous revision.
1. PCIe 1.0
Introduced in 2003. Supports 250 MB/s full duplex data transfer per lane to a maximum of 4 GB/s on an x16 slot.
2. PCIe 2.0
PCIe 2.0 was the second generation of PCIe. It came out in 2007, supports 500 MB/s full duplex data transfer per lane to a maximum of 8 GB/s on an x16 slot.
3. PCIe 3.0
The third generation was introduced in 2010. It supports 1 GB/s full duplex data transfer per lane to a maximum of 16 GB/s on an x16 slot.
4. PCIe 4.0
Introduced in 2017. Fourth Gen PCIe Supports 2 GB/s full duplex data transfer per lane to a maximum of 32 GB/s on an x16 slot.
5. PCIe 5.0
Fifth generation PCIe was released in 2019. Supports 4 GB/s data transfer in full duplex per lane. On an x16 slot which has 16 lanes, it can handle transfers up to 64 GB/s.
6. PCIe 6.0
The most recent PCIe revision, PCIe 6 was released in 2022. It supports 8 GB/s full duplex data transfer per lane to a maximum of 128 GB/s using all 16 lanes on an x16 slot.
Supports Concurrency
The NVMe specification suports 64,000 I/O queues with each queue able to handle 64,000 commands. In comparison, SATA/AHCI supports only a single I/O queue capable of handling only 32 commands. These queues can be mapped to processor cores which can handle instructions simultaneously independent of other cores. This greatly makes multi-core systems faster allowing them to perform I/O operations in parallel eliminating bottlenecks.
Reduces Latency
Latency is the measurement of the time it takes for round-trip travel of commands between the processor and the device which in our context is the storage device. The lower this travel time, the more responsive the system is.
NVMe drives have much lower latency than any other drives. Using the PCIe interface, NVMe communicates directly with the processor via dedicated PCIe lanes. NVMe commands are lightweight, simpler and more optimized for direct communication with the CPU, compared with AHCI. Traditionally, latency is measured in milliseconds (ms) but in NVMe devices, it is mainly measured in microseconds (µs).
Runs High IOPS
IOPS (Input/Output Operations Per Second) is the number of read/write commands a drive completes per second. NVMe drives have much higher IOPS compared to SSDs and HDDs. The PCIe Interface, concurrency support and low latency, in combination allow NVMe drives to run exceptionally high IOPS compared to HDDs and SSDs.
The NVMe driver communicates directly with the system CPU but the AHCI must communicate with the SATA controller. The AHCI has IOPS (Input/Output Operations Per Second) up to 100K while the NVMe has IOPS over 1 million. IOPS (Input/Output Operations Per Second, pronounced i-ops) is a common performance measurement used to benchmark computer storage devices.
NVMe Drives In VPS Servers
As we discussed, NVMe brings I/O bottlenecks down to a bare minimum and can execute considerably higher IOPS compared to other drive type. Servers can take advantage of this also and can use NVMe drives as their storage device if their architecture supports it.
For websites hosted on those servers, this can result in:
- Quick Data Access: NVMe is the fastest at reading and writing data, making pages loads quicker.
- Better User Experience: Visitors will not abandon a quick loading site like they would a slow loading site, reducing bounce rates.
- More Requests at Once: NVMe servers due to the higher IOPS can handle many visitors at the same time without slowing down.
- Higher Rankings: Google favors faster sites, so NVMe’s speed can help sites rank higher.
- Reduced Lag: Lower latency means users get instant responses from the server without any lag.
NVMe virtual servers remain a great option for websites that prioritize performance and speed.
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Conclusion:
Websites that want regular engagement need to focus on their site speed. Speed of a website is extremely important both for their visitors as well as search engine rankings.
NVMe is a relatively new protocol that facilitates high speed data transfer over PCI Express Lanes. These lanes go directly from the device (drive) to the cpu. They are many times faster than HDDs and SSDs, and they don’t have any moving parts which makes them more durable.
VPS servers that use NVMe storage can expect to perform faster than those that use SSDs or traditional hard drives.
VPS Servers or VMs (Virtual Machines) with NVMe SSD can increase a site’s speed by leaps and bounds. They support concurrency, reduce latency and run very high IOPS.
