The Intel SSD DC P4510 SSD Review Part 1: Virtual RAID On CPU (VROC) Scalability
by Billy Tallis on February 15, 2018 3:00 PM EST- Posted in
- SSDs
- Storage
- Intel
- RAID
- Enterprise SSDs
- NVMe
- U.2
- Purley
- Skylake-SP
- VROC
Looking Forward
So far, we've only scratched the surface of the Intel SSD DC P4510 and Intel's VROC solution for NVMe RAID. We've been able to verify only the most basic specifications for the drives, but most of the initial results match up with our expectations. The 8TB Intel SSD DC P4510 offers some substantial performance increases over the 2TB model, and the aggregate capacity and performance it enables from a single server is impressive. Once we get the necessary adapter to measure power consumption of U.2 drives with our Quarch XLC Programmable Power Module, we will begin a deeper analysis of the P4510 on a single-drive basis, comparing it against competing enterprise NVMe SSDs. It is already clear that Intel has made significant generational performance improvements, but the purported efficiency improvements will be at least as tantalizing to datacenter customers. The 16W rated power draw of the 8TB P4510 sounds pretty good in comparison to the 20.5W draw of a 4TB P4500, or the 12W of a 2TB P3520.
Intel's Virtual RAID On CPU (VROC) solution for NVMe RAID has very particular requirements for its use, but once all the pieces are in place, its use is straightforward. The experience using VROC on Linux has been fairly smooth so far, but we have not yet attempted to install an operating system to a VROC array. The RAID-0 and RAID-10 performance we've observed shows excellent scalability to 11.6GB/s sequential reads and over 2M random read IOPS from four drives, with no effort on our part to fine-tune the system for maximum performance. At the moment, we are testing RAID-5 performance and the CPU usage of the parity calculations involved in writing to RAID-5 arrays. At the speed of four NVMe drives like the P4510, this overhead is significant and requires multiple CPU cores, but it is unavoidable: there are no hardware RAID solutions for NVMe drives that can keep up with an array of four P4510s.
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MrSpadge - Friday, February 16, 2018 - link
> On a separate note - the notion of paying Intel extra $$$ just to enable functions you've already purchased (by virtue of them being embedded on the motherboard and the CPU) - I just can't get around it appearing as nothing but a giant ripoff.We take it for granted that any hardware features are exposed to us via free software. However, by that argument one wouldn't need to pay for any software, as the hardware to enable it (i.e. a x86 CPU) is already there and purchased (albiet probably from a different vendor).
And on the other hand: it's apparently OK for Intel and the others to sell the same piece of silicon at different speed grades and configurations for different prices. Here you could also argue that "the hardware is already there" (assuming no defects, as is often the case).
I agree on the anti trust issue of cheaper prices for Intel drives.
boeush - Friday, February 16, 2018 - link
My point is that when you buy these CPUs and motherboards, you automatically pay for the sunk R&D and production costs of VROC integration - it's included in the price of the hardware. It has to be - if VROC I is dud and nobody actually opts for it, Intel has to be sure to recoup its costs regardless.That means you've already paid for VROC once - but you now have to pay twice yo actually use it!
Moreover, the extra complexity involved with this hardware key-based scheme implies that the feature is necessarily more costly (in terms of sunk R&D as well as BOM) than it could have been otherwise. It's like Intel deliberately and intentionally set out to gouge its customers from the early concept stage onward. Very bad optics...
nivedita - Monday, February 19, 2018 - link
Why would you be happier if they actually took the trouble to remove the silicon from your cpu?levizx - Friday, February 16, 2018 - link
> However, by that argument one wouldn't need to pay for any software, as the hardware to enable itThat's a ridiculous claim, the same vendor (SoC vendor, Intel in this case) does NOT produce "any software" (MSFT etc). VROC technology in ALREADY embedded in the hardware/firmware.
BenJeremy - Friday, February 16, 2018 - link
Unless things have changed in the last 3 months, VROC is all but useless unless you stick with intel-branded storage options. My BIL bought a fancy new Gigabyte Aorus Gaming 7 X299 motherboard when they came out, then waited months to finally get a VROC key. It still didn't allow him to make a bootable RAID-0 array the 3 Samsung NVMe sticks. We do know that, in theory, the key is not needed to make such a setup work, as a leaked version of Intel's RST allowed a bootable RAID-0 array in "30-day trial mode".We need to stop falling for Intel's nonsense. AMD's Threadripper is turning in better numbers in RAID-0 configurations, without all the nonsense of plugging in a hardware DRM dongle.
HStewart - Friday, February 16, 2018 - link
"We need to stop falling for Intel's nonsense. AMD's Threadripper is turning in better numbers in RAID-0 configurations, without all the nonsense of plugging in a hardware DRM dongle."Please stop the nonsense of fact less claims about AMD and provide actual proof about performance numbers. Keep in mind this SSD is an enterprise product designed for CPU's like Xeon not game machines.
peevee - Friday, February 16, 2018 - link
Like it.But idle power of 5W is kind of insane, isn't it?
Billy Tallis - Friday, February 16, 2018 - link
Enterprise drives don't try for low idle power because they don't want the huge wake-up latencies to demolish their QoS ratings.peevee - Friday, February 16, 2018 - link
4-drive RAID0 only overcomes 2-drive RAID0 by QD 512 . What kind of a server can run 612 threads at the same time? And what kind of server you will need for full 32 Ruler 1U backend (which would require 4192 threads to take advantage of all that power)?kingpotnoodle - Sunday, February 18, 2018 - link
One use could be shared storage for I/O intensive virtual environments, attached to multiple hypervisor nodes, each with multiple 40Gb+ NICs for the storage network.