Hello, I''m curious if there is a support for OCZ RevoDrive SSD or any other SSD hooked directly on PCIe in Solaris. This RevoDrive looks particularly interesting for its low price and why to buy something SATA based when someone might have twice the speed on PCIe for the same money.... Thanks, Karel -- This message posted from opensolaris.org
> I''m curious if there is a support for OCZ RevoDrive SSD or any other > SSD hooked directly on PCIe in Solaris.The RevoDrive should not require a custom device driver as it is based on the Silicon Image 3124 PCI-X RAID controller connected to a Pericom PCI-X to PCIe bridge chip (PI7C9X130). The required driver would be the si3124(7D), I noticed the man page states NCQ is not supported. I found the following link detailing the status: http://opensolaris.org/jive/thread.jspa?messageID=466436 It might make an interesting L2ARC device, as it is definitely low cost. It''s based on multiple SandForce 1200 controllers. Important to note because the on-board volatile caches are not power protected, so not a good fit for the ZIL Accelerator. But perfectly acceptable for the L2ARC as drive contents are not required to survive a power failure (at this time). Our PCIe based SSD, the DDRdrive X1, does require a dedicated device driver and we exclusively target ZIL acceleration. We support OpenSolaris (2009-06 through b134), OpenIndiana, and NexentaStor 3.0. I am excited to announce we just completed validation and are now also supporting Solaris 11 Express! Best regards, Christopher George Founder/CTO www.ddrdrive.com -- This message posted from opensolaris.org
> From: zfs-discuss-bounces at opensolaris.org [mailto:zfs-discuss- > bounces at opensolaris.org] On Behalf Of Karel Gardas > > I''m curious if there is a support for OCZ RevoDrive SSD or any other SSD > hooked directly on PCIe in Solaris. This RevoDrive looks particularly > interesting for its low price and why to buy something SATA based when > someone might have twice the speed on PCIe for the same money....If you want arc cache, something like the above might be good because it''s larger... But if you want log device, I promise you the DDRDrive will kick the butt of any flash device. (In terms of performance.)
Thank you Christopher and Edward for all the detailed information provided. Indeed DDRDrive looks like a right tool for fast ZIL, but for my development workstation I''m rather searching for l2arc cache where as you note ReviDrive might do the nice job. Thanks, Karel -- This message posted from opensolaris.org
> From: zfs-discuss-bounces at opensolaris.org [mailto:zfs-discuss- > bounces at opensolaris.org] On Behalf Of Karel Gardas > > Thank you Christopher and Edward for all the detailed informationprovided.> Indeed DDRDrive looks like a right tool for fast ZIL, but for mydevelopment> workstation I''m rather searching for l2arc cache where as you noteReviDrive> might do the nice job.Be sure to test the performance of the device when/if you get it. A lot of SSD''s out there don''t perform any better than spindle drives. In fact, I recently got one of these Samsung drives... http://tinyurl.com/38s3ac3 The spec sheet says sequential read 220MB/s, sequential write 120MB/s... Which is 2-4 times faster than the best SATA disk out there... And of course, negligible seek time and latency ... But in practice, I find that drive is no faster than my cheap 500G sata disk. Or maybe just barely faster. Not much. You can''t go wrong by adding more RAM. Until you hit the price barrier. Before you start building l2arc.
What kind of testing did you do on the Samsung SSD? I''ve used FusionIO cards to get upwards of 500MB/s writes and OCZ Deneva SSD (SATA) drives to get 200-250MB/s writes. In many cases the trick is to make sure you have a sufficient amount of threads doing writes in order to get optimal performance. Or it could just be that the Samsung drive you tested has something seriously wrong with it. -Moazam On Nov 26, 2010 8:40pm, Edward Ned Harvey <shill at nedharvey.com> wrote:> > From: zfs-discuss-bounces at opensolaris.org [mailto:zfs-discuss-> > bounces at opensolaris.org] On Behalf Of Karel Gardas> >> > Thank you Christopher and Edward for all the detailed information> provided.> > Indeed DDRDrive looks like a right tool for fast ZIL, but for my> development> > workstation I''m rather searching for l2arc cache where as you note> ReviDrive> > might do the nice job.> Be sure to test the performance of the device when/if you get it. A lot of> SSD''s out there don''t perform any better than spindle drives.> In fact, I recently got one of these Samsung drives...> http://tinyurl.com/38s3ac3> The spec sheet says sequential read 220MB/s, sequential write 120MB/s...> Which is 2-4 times faster than the best SATA disk out there... And of> course, negligible seek time and latency ...> But in practice, I find that drive is no faster than my cheap 500G sata> disk. Or maybe just barely faster. Not much.> You can''t go wrong by adding more RAM. Until you hit the price barrier.> Before you start building l2arc.> _______________________________________________> zfs-discuss mailing list> zfs-discuss at opensolaris.org> http://mail.opensolaris.org/mailman/listinfo/zfs-discuss-------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: <http://mail.opensolaris.org/pipermail/zfs-discuss/attachments/20101127/5d438759/attachment.html>
> > > From: zfs-discuss-bounces at opensolaris.org [mailto:zfs-discuss- > > > > In fact, I recently got one of these Samsung drives... > > http://tinyurl.com/38s3ac3 > > The spec sheet says sequential read 220MB/s, sequential write 120MB/s... > > Which is 2-4 times faster than the best SATA disk out there... And of > > course, negligible seek time and latency ... > > > > But in practice, I find that drive is no faster than my cheap 500G sata > > disk. Or maybe just barely faster. Not much. > > > From: zfs-discuss-bounces at opensolaris.org [mailto:zfs-discuss- > > What kind of testing did you do on the Samsung SSD?Nothing official yet. Although I plan to run a benchmark on it sometime, I haven''t got the cycles available for now. I am using these as the OS drive in some laptops, and I expected it to make the laptop faster. Well, maybe it did, but it''s pretty negligible.
A noob question: These drives that people talk about, can you use them as a system disc too? Install Solaris 11 Express on them? Or can you only use them as a L2ARC or Zil? -- This message posted from opensolaris.org
On Sat, Nov 27, 2010 at 8:10 AM, Orvar Korvar < knatte_fnatte_tjatte at yahoo.com> wrote:> A noob question: > > These drives that people talk about, can you use them as a system disc too? > Install Solaris 11 Express on them? Or can you only use them as a L2ARC or > Zil? > -- > >They''re a standard SATA hard drive. You can use them for whatever you''d like. For the price though, they aren''t really worth the money to buy just to put your OS on. Your system drive on a Solaris system generally doesn''t see enough I/O activity to require the kind of IOPS you can get out of most modern SSD''s. If you were using the system as a workstation, it''d definitely help, as applications tend to feel more responsive with an SSD. That''s all I run in my laptops now. --Tim -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: <http://mail.opensolaris.org/pipermail/zfs-discuss/attachments/20101127/26e91447/attachment.html>
On Sat, Nov 27, 2010 at 01:19:50PM -0600, Tim Cook wrote:> They''re a standard SATA hard drive. You can use them for whatever you''d > like. For the price though, they aren''t really worth the money to buy just > to put your OS on. Your system drive on a Solaris system generally doesn''t > see enough I/O activity to require the kind of IOPS you can get out of mostI run hundreds of vserver guests from an SSD, only the /home is mounted on a hard drive/RAID.> modern SSD''s. If you were using the system as a workstation, it''d > definitely help, as applications tend to feel more responsive with an SSD. > That''s all I run in my laptops now.-- Eugen* Leitl <a href="http://leitl.org">leitl</a> http://leitl.org ______________________________________________________________ ICBM: 48.07100, 11.36820 http://www.ativel.com http://postbiota.org 8B29F6BE: 099D 78BA 2FD3 B014 B08A 7779 75B0 2443 8B29 F6BE
"Your system drive on a Solaris system generally doesn''t see
enough I/O activity to require the kind of IOPS you can get out of most modern
SSD''s. "
My system drive sees a lot of activity, to the degree everything is going slow.
I have a SunRay that my girlfriend use, and I have 5-10 torrents going on, and
surf the web - often my system crawls. Very often my girlfriend gets irritated
because everything lags and she frequently asks me if she can do some task, or
if she should wait until I have finished copying my files. Unbearable.
I have a quad core Intel 9450 at 2.66GHz, and 8GB RAM.
I am planning to use a SSD and really hope it will be faster.
$ iostat -xcnXCTdz 1
cpu
us sy wt id
25 7 0 68
extended device statistics
r/s w/s kr/s kw/s wait actv wsvc_t asvc_t %w %b device
0,0 0,0 0,0 0,0 0,0 0,0 0,0 0,0 0 0 c8
0,0 0,0 0,0 0,0 0,0 0,0 0,0 0,0 0 0 c8t0d0
37,0 442,1 4489,6 51326,1 7,5 2,0 15,7 4,1 98 100 c7d0
--
This message posted from opensolaris.org
On Sat, Nov 27, 2010 at 2:16 PM, Orvar Korvar < knatte_fnatte_tjatte at yahoo.com> wrote:> "Your system drive on a Solaris system generally doesn''t see enough I/O > activity to require the kind of IOPS you can get out of most modern SSD''s. " > > My system drive sees a lot of activity, to the degree everything is going > slow. I have a SunRay that my girlfriend use, and I have 5-10 torrents going > on, and surf the web - often my system crawls. Very often my girlfriend gets > irritated because everything lags and she frequently asks me if she can do > some task, or if she should wait until I have finished copying my files. > Unbearable. > > I have a quad core Intel 9450 at 2.66GHz, and 8GB RAM. > > I am planning to use a SSD and really hope it will be faster. > > > > > $ iostat -xcnXCTdz 1 > > cpu > us sy wt id > 25 7 0 68 > extended device statistics > r/s w/s kr/s kw/s wait actv wsvc_t asvc_t %w %b device > 0,0 0,0 0,0 0,0 0,0 0,0 0,0 0,0 0 0 c8 > 0,0 0,0 0,0 0,0 0,0 0,0 0,0 0,0 0 0 c8t0d0 > 37,0 442,1 4489,6 51326,1 7,5 2,0 15,7 4,1 98 100 c7d0Desktop usage is a different beast as I alluded to. A dedicated server typically doesn''t have any issues. I''d strongly suggest getting one of the sandforce controller based SSD''s. They''re the best on the market right now by far. --Tim -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: <http://mail.opensolaris.org/pipermail/zfs-discuss/attachments/20101127/581c2e55/attachment.html>
A word of caution on the Silicon Image 3124. I have tested out a two extremely cheap card using the si3124 driver on b134 and OIb147. One card was PCI, the other PCI-X. I found that both are unusable until the driver is updated. Large''ish file transfers, say over 1GB would lock up the machine and cause a kernel panic. Investigation revealed it was si3124. The driver is in serious need of an update, at least in the builds mentioned above. It''s possible that a firmware update on the card would help, but I never had time to explore that option. If a device using the si3124 driver works great for you in a L2ARC role after extensive testing, then by all means use it, I just wanted to pass along my experience. -Chris The RevoDrive should not require a custom device driver as it is based on> the > Silicon Image 3124 PCI-X RAID controller connected to a Pericom PCI-X to > PCIe bridge chip (PI7C9X130). The required driver would be the si3124(7D), > I noticed the man page states NCQ is not supported. I found the following > link > detailing the status: > > http://opensolaris.org/jive/thread.jspa?messageID=466436 >-------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: <http://mail.opensolaris.org/pipermail/zfs-discuss/attachments/20101127/8a9f5d37/attachment.html>
I am waiting for the next gen Intel SSD drives, G3. They are arriving very soon. And from what I can infer by reading here, I can use it without issues. Solaris will recognize the Intel SDD drive without any drivers needed, or whatever? Intel new SSD should work with Solaris 11 Express, yes? -- This message posted from opensolaris.org
Agreed, SSD with SandForce controllers are the only way to go. The controller makes a world of difference. -Moazam On Sat, Nov 27, 2010 at 12:27 PM, Tim Cook <tim at cook.ms> wrote:> > > On Sat, Nov 27, 2010 at 2:16 PM, Orvar Korvar > <knatte_fnatte_tjatte at yahoo.com> wrote: >> >> "Your system drive on a Solaris system generally doesn''t see enough I/O >> activity to require the kind of IOPS you can get out of most modern SSD''s. " >> >> My system drive sees a lot of activity, to the degree everything is going >> slow. I have a SunRay that my girlfriend use, and I have 5-10 torrents going >> on, and surf the web - often my system crawls. Very often my girlfriend gets >> irritated because everything lags and she frequently asks me if she can do >> some task, or if she should wait until I have finished copying my files. >> Unbearable. >> >> I have a quad core Intel 9450 at 2.66GHz, and 8GB RAM. >> >> I am planning to use a SSD and really hope it will be faster. >> >> >> >> >> $ iostat -xcnXCTdz 1 >> >> cpu >> us sy wt id >> ?25 ?7 ?0 68 >> ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ?extended device statistics >> ? ?r/s ? ?w/s ? kr/s ? kw/s wait actv wsvc_t asvc_t ?%w ?%b device >> ? ?0,0 ? ?0,0 ? ?0,0 ? ?0,0 ?0,0 ?0,0 ? ?0,0 ? ?0,0 ? 0 ? 0 c8 >> ? ?0,0 ? ?0,0 ? ?0,0 ? ?0,0 ?0,0 ?0,0 ? ?0,0 ? ?0,0 ? 0 ? 0 c8t0d0 >> ? 37,0 ?442,1 4489,6 51326,1 ?7,5 ?2,0 ? 15,7 ? ?4,1 ?98 100 c7d0 > > Desktop usage is a different beast as I alluded to. ?A dedicated server > typically doesn''t have any issues. ?I''d strongly suggest getting one of the > sandforce controller based SSD''s. ?They''re the best on the market right now > by far. > > --Tim > _______________________________________________ > zfs-discuss mailing list > zfs-discuss at opensolaris.org > http://mail.opensolaris.org/mailman/listinfo/zfs-discuss > >
On Sat, Nov 27, 2010 at 3:12 PM, Orvar Korvar < knatte_fnatte_tjatte at yahoo.com> wrote:> I am waiting for the next gen Intel SSD drives, G3. They are arriving very > soon. And from what I can infer by reading here, I can use it without > issues. Solaris will recognize the Intel SDD drive without any drivers > needed, or whatever? > > Intel new SSD should work with Solaris 11 Express, yes? > >You don''t need drivers for any SATA based SSD. It shows up as a standard hard drive and plugs into a standard SATA port. By the time the G3 Intel drive is out, the next gen Sandforce should be out as well. Unless Intel does something revolutionary, they will still be behind the Sandforce drives. --Tim -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: <http://mail.opensolaris.org/pipermail/zfs-discuss/attachments/20101127/1fcf1ae7/attachment.html>
On Nov 27, 2010, at 16:14, Tim Cook wrote:> You don''t need drivers for any SATA based SSD. It shows up as a > standard > hard drive and plugs into a standard SATA port. By the time the G3 > Intel > drive is out, the next gen Sandforce should be out as well. Unless > Intel > does something revolutionary, they will still be behind the Sandforce > drives.Are you referring to the SF-2000 chips? http://www.sandforce.com/index.php?id=133 http://www.legitreviews.com/article/1429/1/ http://www.google.com/search?q=sandforce+sf-2000
There are problems with Sandforce controllers, according to forum posts. Buggy firmware. And in practice, Sandforce is far below it''s theoretical values. I expect Intel to have fewer problems. -- This message posted from opensolaris.org
On Sun, Nov 28, 2010 at 1:41 PM, Orvar Korvar < knatte_fnatte_tjatte at yahoo.com> wrote:> There are problems with Sandforce controllers, according to forum posts. > Buggy firmware. And in practice, Sandforce is far below it''s theoretical > values. I expect Intel to have fewer problems. > >According to what forum posts? There were issues when Crucial and a few others released alpha firmware into production... Anandtech has put those drives through the ringer without issue. Several people on this list are running them as well. --Tim -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: <http://mail.opensolaris.org/pipermail/zfs-discuss/attachments/20101128/5e0db76e/attachment.html>
On Sun, Nov 28, 2010 at 10:42 AM, David Magda <dmagda at ee.ryerson.ca> wrote:> On Nov 27, 2010, at 16:14, Tim Cook wrote: > > You don''t need drivers for any SATA based SSD. It shows up as a standard >> hard drive and plugs into a standard SATA port. By the time the G3 Intel >> drive is out, the next gen Sandforce should be out as well. Unless Intel >> does something revolutionary, they will still be behind the Sandforce >> drives. >> > > Are you referring to the SF-2000 chips? > > http://www.sandforce.com/index.php?id=133 > http://www.legitreviews.com/article/1429/1/ > http://www.google.com/search?q=sandforce+sf-2000 > >Yup. --Tim -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: <http://mail.opensolaris.org/pipermail/zfs-discuss/attachments/20101128/2b63fa36/attachment.html>
> There are problems with Sandforce controllers, according to forum posts. Buggy firmware. And in practice, Sandforce is far below it''s theoretical values. I expect Intel to have fewer problems.I believe it''s more the firmware (and pace of firmware updates) from companies making Sandforce-based drives than it is the controller. Enthusiasts can tolerate OCZ and others releasing alphas/betas in forum posts. While the G2 Intel drives may not be the performance kings anymore (or the most price-effective), I''d argue they''re certainly the most stable when it comes to firmware. Have my eye on a G3 Intel drive for my laptop, where I can''t really afford beta firmware updates biting me on the road. --khd
On Sun, Nov 28, 2010 at 5:18 PM, Krunal Desai <movszx at gmail.com> wrote:> > There are problems with Sandforce controllers, according to forum posts. > Buggy firmware. And in practice, Sandforce is far below it''s theoretical > values. I expect Intel to have fewer problems. > > I believe it''s more the firmware (and pace of firmware updates) from > companies making Sandforce-based drives than it is the controller. > Enthusiasts can tolerate OCZ and others releasing alphas/betas in forum > posts. > > While the G2 Intel drives may not be the performance kings anymore (or the > most price-effective), I''d argue they''re certainly the most stable when it > comes to firmware. Have my eye on a G3 Intel drive for my laptop, where I > can''t really afford beta firmware updates biting me on the road. > > --khd > >Again this is news to me. Do you have examples? There were plenty of revisions when they first dropped 6-8 months ago, but I haven''t heard of anything similar in quite some time. As for Intel, they''ve had their share of issues as well. I assume you remember the data-loss inducing BIOS password bug? --Tim -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: <http://mail.opensolaris.org/pipermail/zfs-discuss/attachments/20101129/5b7d8192/attachment.html>
Hi, Anyone who has the experience of Texas Memory Systems''s RamSan in ZFS? Thanks. Fred -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: <http://mail.opensolaris.org/pipermail/zfs-discuss/attachments/20101129/3500a576/attachment.html>