DSS support for Adaptec MaxIQ™ SSD Cache solution

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09-10-2009, 12:59 AM
SeanLeyne

DSS support for Adaptec MaxIQ™ SSD Cache solution

I know that this is a little unfair given that Adaptec announced the solution just today...
Adaptec MaxIQ™ SSD Cache Performance Kit

I am wondering if Open-E knows whether DSS will be able to support this solution in the *near* future?

The reading the Adaptec details suggests that most of the solution is implemented in new firmware for the series 2, 5 and 5Z controllers along with a new version of the Adaptec Storage Manager software.

It looks to be the ideal solution for blending SSD (Adaptec's own custom SSD) and disk storage, something that I would like to integrate into our 2 DSS installs

All feedback will be appreciated.
09-16-2009, 09:44 PM
Wiberg

Quote:

Originally Posted by SeanLeyne

I know that this is a little unfair given that Adaptec announced the solution just today...
Adaptec MaxIQ™ SSD Cache Performance Kit

I am wondering if Open-E knows whether DSS will be able to support this solution in the *near* future?

The reading the Adaptec details suggests that most of the solution is implemented in new firmware for the series 2, 5 and 5Z controllers along with a new version of the Adaptec Storage Manager software.

It looks to be the ideal solution for blending SSD (Adaptec's own custom SSD) and disk storage, something that I would like to integrate into our 2 DSS installs

All feedback will be appreciated.

I don't see any reason why it would not work now. You will need to set up MaxIQ in the bios of the card since open-e does not yet support the latest version of ASM. Other than that MaxIQ should be agnostic to the OS and application.
09-18-2009, 10:17 PM
techshift

I'm also very interested in this, though I do have a concern. We have been using areca cards for their out of band management through via a built-in NIC with web interface and SMTP capabilities. AAdapatec does not have that option. Does open-e support monitoring of the adaptec RAID status and sending SMTP alerts?
09-21-2009, 05:17 PM
Robotbeat

This looks really interesting. We're going to look into this. I wonder if they'll ever let you use your own SSD? That would be amazing.
09-21-2009, 07:06 PM
SeanLeyne

Quote:

Originally Posted by Robotbeat

This looks really interesting. We're going to look into this. I wonder if they'll ever let you use your own SSD? That would be amazing.

I agree that it looks amazing!

As for using your own SSDs? Maybe some day, but in the meantime they will be 'milking' the special functionality as much as possible $$$$.

I must admit that since the have chosen the Intel X25-E SSDs, they have chosen the best of the current SSD offerings. To open up the solution to "any old SSD" could create a support nightmare for them (there are some dog SSDs out there).

The real "killer" would be to tie together a PCIe based SSD solution (FusionIO or OCX) with a RAID controller -- that would rock!!!!
09-22-2009, 12:15 AM
Robotbeat

I only mention that because I have a very high performance, high-quality, high write-durability, high-capacity ssd sitting on the bench in our datacenter. It's even better than the Intel x-25e drives which are certainly the best of the consumer drives.
09-22-2009, 01:07 AM
tingshen

Robotbeat, it won't allow you to use your own SSD.

The X25-E they use, is using customized firmware. Unless you can get hold of the firmware itself, and flash it to a fully compatible X25-E drive (let's say X25-M?), you won't be able to leverage on the new cache family :)

Given the SSDs I'm holding, I can try to do this trick for you, but for sure, it may violate warranty or even the UELA.

I got a call few weeks back from Adaptec, for trying this new toy out. It is quite an independent cache. You plug it in, it will auto recognize it as a cache, you plug it out, no more cache, that's all. No impact in your underlying data of the original disk array. My question is, if I am already running quite a number of X25-M SSDs rocketing fast @ up to 2GB/s read & 1GB/s write kind of performance, what is the impact of a single drive cache with 250MB/s read & 170MB/s to my existing set up? Perhaps that depends on the main difference in using a 512MB DDR2 cache vs additional 30GB secondary cache, uhm...sounds like what netapps is pushing their customers to "upgrade" lol!
11-12-2009, 07:54 PM
Robotbeat

Okay, I have a MaxIQ kit (with an Adaptec card) in for testing with the Open-E. It's really fast. 17,000 random read IOPS (after the cache is warmed up) over just a one gigabit ISCSI connection (with just a simple volume on a single SATA hard drive, besides the cache SSD) with a 15 GB test file.
11-12-2009, 07:55 PM
Robotbeat

It works fine, but you can't manage it through Open-E, since the Adaptec storage management software included in the Open-E kernel is old. I think you need versiuon 6.3 of the Adaptec software for it to work well with MaxIQ.
11-12-2009, 08:57 PM
Robotbeat

It appears that there is now a "small update" that brings you to Adaptec Storage Manager version 6.3. You just have to ask Open-E nicely for it.
11-13-2009, 03:36 AM
bitbriimp

bookmarked and b back l8er,i need more info, :-)
12-12-2009, 05:02 AM
williamcreig

Quote:

Originally Posted by tingshen

Robotbeat, it won't allow you to use your own SSD.

The X25-E they use, is using customized firmware. Unless you can get hold of the firmware itself, and flash it to a fully compatible X25-E drive (let's say X25-M?), you won't be able to leverage on the new cache family :)

Given the SSDs I'm holding, I can try to do this trick for you, but for sure, it may violate warranty or even the UELA.

I got a call few weeks back from Adaptec, for trying this new toy out. It is quite an independent cache. You plug it in, it will auto recognize it as a cache, you plug it out, no more cache, that's all. No impact in your underlying data of the original disk array. My question is, if I am already running quite a number of X25-M SSDs rocketing fast @ up to 2GB/s read & 1GB/s write kind of performance, what is the impact of a single drive cache with 250MB/s read & 170MB/s to my existing set up? Perhaps that depends on the main difference in using a 512MB DDR2 cache vs additional 30GB secondary cache, uhm...sounds like what netapps is pushing their customers to "upgrade" lol!

Yeah ting, what you said is extreamly true, I tried more time to use our own SSD. But I am helpless on this. Finally I knew through my friend about this.
02-03-2010, 09:54 AM
adwardzen

Quote:

Originally Posted by Robotbeat

Okay, I have a MaxIQ kit (with an Adaptec card) in for testing with the Open-E. It's really fast. 17,000 random read IOPS (after the cache is warmed up) over just a one gigabit ISCSI connection (with just a simple volume on a single SATA hard drive, besides the cache SSD) with a 15 GB test file.

Yeah, its working fine. Thanks for your suggestion....
05-25-2010, 10:33 AM
danielroner

Hi mates, thank you very much for all your assistance. All your suggestions are helps me a lot,,,
05-28-2010, 04:22 PM
tingshen

hey guys, I just recalled I got some posting here lol.

Anyway, we went ahead to get the kit and use it on 5805Z. Unfortunately, under Hyper-V R2, the cache seems a little redundant.....and frankly speaking, it doesn't have any performance benefit for write txn... :(

I think it will be damn good for web server, those heavy read type.....
06-07-2010, 05:28 AM
rcohen

SSD Cache vs. RAM cache

For the price of a MaxIQ setup (including SLC SSD), I don't get the benefit of a 32gb SSD cache over 32gb of RAM on the DSS machine.

To me, it seems like the only benefit of an SSD cache is that it persists across reboots. That's nice for a workstation, but it seems useless for a server.

RAM cache is certainly higher performance than SSD.
06-07-2010, 04:03 PM
SeanLeyne

Quote:

Originally Posted by rcohen

For the price of a MaxIQ setup (including SLC SSD), I don't get the benefit of a 32gb SSD cache over 32gb of RAM on the DSS machine.

To me, it seems like the only benefit of an SSD cache is that it persists across reboots. That's nice for a workstation, but it seems useless for a server.

RAM cache is certainly higher performance than SSD.

Remember that DSS doesn't provide any RAM cache for BLOCK IO LUNs/shares, only FILE IO, so in that case the SSD cache provided by MaxIQ would be extremely beneficial.
06-07-2010, 04:30 PM
rcohen

Quote:

Originally Posted by SeanLeyne

Remember that DSS doesn't provide any RAM cache for BLOCK IO LUNs/shares, only FILE IO, so in that case the SSD cache provided by MaxIQ would be extremely beneficial.

Sure, if you disable caching on DSS, then you are totally relying on controller caching. Why would you want to do that?

All I can imagine is the possibility that the MaxIQ cache algorithm may be better for certain data access patterns. If that is truly happening in real-world applications, it seems like a better solution would be do have some more tunable settings on the DSS cache (size of MRU vs. MFU, etc.)

If the SSD cache provided more bang for the buck than RAM, that would be different, but that doesn't appear to be the case. Apparently, MLC SSDs aren't suitable for caching, due to performance and reliability issues with cache write patterns.
06-07-2010, 05:07 PM
SeanLeyne

Quote:

Originally Posted by rcohen

Sure, if you disable caching on DSS, then you are totally relying on controller caching. Why would you want to do that?

DDS does not do any caching of BLOCK IO LUNs/shares, period. There is nothing to disable.
06-07-2010, 05:38 PM
webguyz

Only File I/O takes advantage of caching by using the extra memory on your motherboard, Block I/O just uses whatever cache you have on your disk controller but none on your motherboad. But you can't do autofailover if your doing File I/O.