LSI Megaraid and LSI cachecade 2 Pro

[marcinrozanski]

It would be nice to test:
1) RAID 5 with 12* SAS 15K
2) RAID 5 with 12* SAS 15K +1 * INTEL X25-M SATA SSD 120GB (with Cache Cade software)

this would allow one to measure the boost of a Cache Cade solution.

On a Cache Cade - I believe that this is feature of a firmware and it's OS agnostic - it's LSI card that decides which data goes where (hot - SSD, cold - HDD). So as long as your OS has got driver for particular a card you should be fine.

[webguyz]

Sorry to revive an old thread but curious as to whether anyone has implemented this. We are considering this combo (LSI and Cachcade) but have no experience with LSI or Cachecade.

I read all the stuff in the knowledgebase including the tests and have read all kinds of reports on the Internet about the performance benefits, just want to hear from someone that has successfully implemented LSI and Cachecade in a production DSS V6 system (not test environment).

I need real live experience and not opinions and conjecture. About to pull the trigger on buying all this hardware (cards, bbu,cachcade x 2) and its expensive for a small shop like mine.

Don't want to make a horrible mistake if this does not work well or reliably.

Thanks!!

[shawngrass]

We did try the CacheCade Pro 2.0 software with a single SSD drive, and 6 - SAS 600GB 6Ggb 15K Raid 10. The SSD became a bottleneck for the drives. I think if we had more SSD's in a Raid 0 config it would have worked better. We are getting about 600MBps read so we are content with not turning on the SSD again.

Thanks
Shawn

[webguyz]

What brand of SSD drive did you use? Can the Cachecade be used just for reading or is it always on in read/write mode when its being used?

Thanks!

[SeanLeyne]

What brand of SSD drive did you use? Can the Cachecade be used just for reading or is it always on in read/write mode when its being used?

In order to be used as a read cache data must be written to the SSD.

The card/software decides what blocks are used most often and writes those to disk first, then to the cache. (So, if the SSD fails, no data is lost)

[shawngrass]

What brand of SSD drive did you use? Can the Cachecade be used just for reading or is it always on in read/write mode when its being used?

Thanks!

It is a Intel SSD SC2MH12. I don't know if you can set it up to only read, I know in the old version of CacheCade it could only be used for reads.

Thanks
Shawn

[r3vo]

We did try the CacheCade Pro 2.0 software with a single SSD drive, and 6 - SAS 600GB 6Ggb 15K Raid 10. The SSD became a bottleneck for the drives. I think if we had more SSD's in a Raid 0 config it would have worked better. We are getting about 600MBps read so we are content with not turning on the SSD again.

Thanks
Shawn

Thats interesting. I wonder why the SSD became the bottleneck? Sure, one SSD could be a bottleneck if you copying or transferring big files compared to 6x600GB 6GBs disks.
But isn't it related to the requirements?
So I guess its better to use cacheCade or Maxcache (from Adaptec) if youre expecting lots of IO's and not big bandwith?
Please correct me if my expectations regarding SSD caching are wrong!

I am interested in for what kind of environment you used the SSD for caching? (e.g. what kind of servers etc.)
Maybe thats the reason why youre cachecade situation doesnt meet your needs?

Unfortunately I cant give you any feedback cause we do not use cachecade or maxcache in a productive environment, so I am just interested.
Thanks.

[r3vo]

just to get sure I understood youre post correctly.

You used your're SSD as read cache or as write cache too?

[gharding]

Did you also have the Fast Path option for the SSD which increases performance

[haresdehan]

LSI has announced a new line of MegaRAID SATA+SAS controller cards designed to deliver the high I/O transaction performance needed to accelerate the most demanding database applications and datacenter workloads. The new controllers are powered by the LSI dual-core 6Gb/s SAS RAID-on-Chip, delivering data quickly and reliably to mission-critical applications by combining the industry's highest server RAID performance with intelligent flash-based caching and enhanced data protection capabilities.