What's the best RAID controller that's validated with X25-E & X25-M?

[idata]

I hope those who are currently using either X25-M or X25-E with any of the validated RAID controller could share your experience here.

So far I only saw some products from Adaptec with official validation of both X25-M & X25-E. Please update this thread and I will try my best to maintain the list for the benefit of everybody. I personally need some help on this for my virtualization project, therefore I can't segregating the optimum use of SSD or set up hybrid combi for whatever purpose. All the Virtual Machines are just a bunch of files so that they are very easy to maintain/migrate around should the host fail. So, everything must run on the SSDs! *except the backups

List of validated RAID cards with X25-M & X25-E:

1.Adaptec RAID 51245

2.Adaptec RAID 516453.Adaptec RAID 52445

4.Adaptec RAID 5405

5.Adaptec RAID 54456.Adaptec RAID 58057.Adaptec RAID 5085

Just curious, is Intel IOP 348 @ 1200 the best RAID processor in the market? Is adaptec also using this? If not, is Adaptec processors better than the Intel's?

[idata]

Pull your handbrake OJ. What is your definition about "Ruling All!!!" ???

IOP 348 1200Mhz chipset from Intel has an internal bandwidth of 12GB/s. This will only be saturated by about 175pcs of X25-M from the writing speed perspective (in theory). I can't seem to find much info about the LSI 1078 chip used in Intel SRCSASJV RAID card. But for sure, it is validated with X25-E ONLY.....

This is not looking good, and for sure it doesn't rule at all but chasing behind all the vendors adopting IOP348.

X25-E is very fast (170MB/s writing speed compare to 70MB/s in X25-M), but that would mean you only need very little amount of X25-E to saturate a particular RAID controller. Let's take IOP 348 1200Mhz for example, it takes about 72pcs of X25-E to saturate the RAID controller in terms of writing speed. What does that mean?

You'll be paying a premium, for up to 72pcs of X25-E 32GB, to have only about 2TB of effective storage, and see no more performance improvement when you scale up beyond 72pcs of X25-E.....

With the same amount of money, you can probably get 144pcs of X25-M 80GB, to have up to 10TB (5x of X25-E 32GB) of effective storage, and still continue to see linear performance when you scale up all the way to 175pcs before IOP 348 1200Mhz is showing no more performance increase.

The above assumption is just based on my personal understanding towards SSD & RAID chip performance so far. Do correct me if I'm wrong.

So are you still going to stick to X25-E or forget about the limited 100K erase/write cycle of X25-M which you could probably never able to hit within the 36 months warranty period?

I really do not understand the following facts from Intel:

1.IOP 348 1200Mhz is never part of the Intel RAID card product line but all the slow LSI based products.

2.Intel didn't validate X25-M together with X25-E for many of the Intel RAID controller as well as Intel Servers.

Was it done on purpose? So that all the 3rd party OEM like Adaptec can start selling IOP348 based product and make calculative people like me start chasing for X25-M?

But one thing for sure.....it doesn't matter you buy IOP348 based RAID products from 3rd party or Intel RAID controllers; it doesn't matter you opt for X25-E instead of X25-M because you're so over-worried that the drive may just refuse to write anything to the cell out of sudden......

Intel still win......lol!

[idata]

Hi Tingshen,

thanks for starting this topic, I guess many of us can consider really profitable

We have similar interest in our company as we're planning to build a server with FusionIO card. It would be a database server, so we don't need too much space (like you), but the greater IOPS the better. FusionIO cards maybe not-so-good at bandwidth, but if you are in need of IOPS, it's ideal (at its price level - Texas you mentioned is way more expensive). You're right, it's cannot boot (yet) and you can't share the old pieces among user computers

So I would assure you to go with ssd and not with pci card, as you have virtual machines and maybe you need better bandwidth than IOPS.

As for raid cards.. We would use two/four Intel X-25E for the system and we're not sure whether to use raid card or not. But if we will, it will be definitely an Adaptec card.

[idata]

Hi akhhu,

Actually I am still quite confused between the 2 important terms. Bandwidth vs IOPS. May I know why is FusionI/O card not having high bandwidth but high IOPS? I saw IBM also get FushionI/O to OEM their PCIe SSD recently: http://www-03.ibm.com/systems/storage/disk/ssd/ssd_adapters.html but the price will sure be skyhigh compare to buying direct from FushionI/O.

When using X25-M or X25-E Intel SSD, is the bandwidth and IOPS closely dependent on the RAID controller itself?

[idata]

Hello Tingshen,

actually the FusionIO drive has very good bandwidth compared to hdds (700/600 MB/s r/w) - the old version, the new ioDriveDuo is even better (1500/1000).

I guess their card contains some memory chip (like SSDs) integrated so they can achieve this performance.

Anyway, as I understood, higher IOPS needs you, if your system has many calls for the storage. (While HDDs can achieve some hundreds IOPS (multiplied in SANs), the X-25E may reach 35000/3300 r/w IOPS, the IOcard can do 100000 IOPS.) High bandwidth needs you, if you have many file opertations (mostly big files).

We have one 2-3 GB database file, and our business system reads from/writes into that file everytime users do something, we'd better going for higher IOPS solution.

Thanks for the IBM link, a month ago I got a reply from them and they said they can't give me price for the product for Europe and it hasn't changed by today :-/By the way, HP has IO solution too: http://www.tomshardware.com/news/HP-fusion-io-SSD,7198.html http://www.tomshardware.com/news/HP-fusion-io-SSD,7198.html

As for the controller... I guess every controller has a limit (both bandwidth and IOPS) that they can handle. The FusionIO card is placed into a PCIe slot, so it doesn't depend on the raid card. I don't know how many SSD can overflow a raid card, maybe a little googling could help us out

[idata]

akhhu, any idea how much does the fusion i/o drive cost?

What you mentioned is just the paper bandwidth and IOPS. Is there a way (application or device) for us to benchmark our application for the bandwidth and IOPS that's consuming?

IBM is going to give me the price soon. However, I dunno if they are using the identical fushion io drive or a different firmware on it, and I dunno how much would IBM mark up for such "OEM" product......

Fushion IO, texas Memory or even consumer base product like photofast monster, they are all relying on another RAID controller to hold the SSDs. The only difference between an Adaptec RAID card + many X25-M is......there is no SATA or SAS interface acting as another layer of bottleneck. So the onboard RAID controller will still be the bottleneck, it will never saturate the PCIe bandwidth.....

So IOPS is relying on which part? The RAID controller? Or the SSD controller?