Nytro MegaRAID Overview
ATTENTION Convention of usage of important terms:
ATTENTION Nytro™ Flash Module: On-board Flash module, which is used as data cache devices with the help of Nytro controller.
SSD: This term refers to external solid-state disks (SSDs).
Controller card/controller/Nytro controller card: This term refers to the Nytro MegaRAID® controller.
Nytro Cache drive group: A collection of on-board Nytro Flash modules that reside on the Nytro controller.
Nytro Cache Drive: A cache drive (VD), which is created from Nytro Flash modules with one of the supported configurations with write policy: RAID 1-Write Back/Write Through, RAID 0-Write Back/Write Through, RAID 1-elastic cache (R1-EC) (Write Back only), and RAID 1-boot volume configuration.
Source VD: A virtual drive associated to a Nytro Cache drive.
SuperCap: Another type of BBU. The terms, Supercap and BBU are used interchangeably in this document.
Cache Volume: Nytro Cache drive
ATTENTION The controller name, version number, date and time, values, and parameters that are shown in the images and commands are based on the controller that is connected to your production server, and are for example only. Use the StorCLI prototypes provided based on your requirement.
This document describes how to configure, monitor, and maintain the Nytro™ MegaRAID® Application Acceleration Card, using the MegaRAID Storage Manager™, WebBIOS configuration utility (CU), Human Interface Infrastructure (HII) configuration utility, Storage Command utility (StorCLI), and Pre-boot CLI (PCLI). From the low profile (HHHL) Nytro MegaRAID design with LSI SAS2208 RAID-on-Chip (ROC) controller, Nytro MegaRAID81xx-8e8i integrates the on-boardLSISAS2x20 20-port 6 GB SAS expander to expand the SAS connectivity. This device is compliant with the Fusion-MPT™ architecture and provides a PCI Express 3.0 interface.
This document documents the SAS technology, Serial ATA (SATA) technology, Nytro Cache drive software, SSD Guard™, Dimmer Switch®, UEFI 2.0, configuration scenarios, and drive types. Other features such as Fast Path and SafeStore™ are described in other chapters of this guide.
The LSI® Nytro MegaRAID (this is a combination of the LSI proven MegaRAID controller tightly integrated with built-in Nytro Flash modules to be used as data cache devices with the help of LSI Nytro controller) Application Acceleration Card for DAS is designed to accelerate applications economically with a solution providing leading RAID performance from direct-attached storage combined with intelligent caching using on-board Flash storage.
The controller increases the storage performance by retaining the current investment in direct-attached storage (DAS). Flash technology has become almost synonymous with speed, but it comes at a price premium over hard disk drives (HDD). The controller combines Flash technology with LSI’s industry leading 6Gb/s SAS/SATA ROC device implementation. Using intelligent caching algorithms to help identify application hot data (the frequently accessed data is stored and accessed from Flash enabling the lowest possible latency). By combining Flash and HDDs, this solution is designed to enable the lowest cost/GB at the lowest cost/transaction over products supporting only Flash memory.
The Nytro controller provides accelerated performance and improved manageability to MegaRAID with its two embedded solid state storage modules. The Nytro controller uses on-board solid state storage (SSD) in front of the connected hard disk drive (HDD) drives to create high-capacity and high-performance acceleration cache pools.
The controller provides enterprise class data protection and transparent performance acceleration to direct-attached SCSI storage volumes. The card provides reliability, high performance, and fault-tolerant drive subsystem management. Performance acceleration is powered by intelligent caching using the Nytro Flash storage.
The Nytro controller is easy to use with transparent access to applications. Not all of the solid-state disk (SSD) implementations work at enterprise levels. Performance might suddenly drop after only several hours of use. The controller provides more sustainable high performance by using its own on-board PCIe accessible Flash storage. This Flash storage is certified by LSI in internal testing for enterprise applications and offers more consistent latency performance over SAS-accessed Nytro Flash modules. This industry proven LSI software drivers permit many applications to enjoy the performance improvement seamlessly from the controller without any application or file system modifications.
The controller combines Nytro Flash modules with HDD Storage for Economy. In addition to providing caching intelligence and high performance Flash storage, the controller uses LSI’s latest ROC technology, which is PCIe 2.0 and PCIe 3.0 compliant. The intelligent caching implementation can provide high performance when using SAS or SATA hard drives. Another benefit is that caching lightens the HDD load, hence HDD RAID rebuilds complete faster and removes traditional HDD head wear from accessing small block requests typical in database environments.
Provides an economical solution for accelerating applications – by storing frequently accessed data on low-latency Nytro Flash modules while existing SAS or SATA connected hard drives to achieve a balance of performance and cost savings